#usually just like. one or two pokemon characters per game get fleshed out to that degree

[luckyfaeth]

despite all the graphics issues, pokemon scarlet is one of my favorite pokemon experiences ive had in years

(granted, i also did not really have major glitches so it really didn't hinder my experience that much)

[pkmn-fangamer]

Pokémon Solar Light & Lunar Dark Review

Intro:

The game starts in Soltree Town in the players room. The player is sitting in front of his/her TV and is watching a battle between two Pokémon trainers. Your mother comes in and tells you that your best friend, Rodney, is waiting for you downstairs to get your first Pokemon from Prof. Pinewood. You walk to the lab with Rodney and the Professor lets you choose one of three Pokemon. After choosing your starter, Rodney runs out of the lab. The Professor tells you about a young girl named Keira, who is getting the last Pokémon, but it seems that she has forgotten it. After finding Keira in Mossy Town her mother tells you to go back to your house, because your mother has a gift for you. Back in Soltree Town you receive the PokéCom and the Running Shoes from your parents.

From then on, the player will set off on adventures through the Rikoto region. Along the way, the player, Rodney, and Keira will battle eight Gym Leaders, while trying to complete the Pokédex. After managing to obtain all eight Badges, the player will head to the Pokémon League to battle the Elite Four and the Champion.

How to Play:

Download and extract this file to the folder of your choice. If you don’t have a program to unzip files, I recommend Peazip, which is safe and works well. Once extracted, double “Game.exe” to play.

Story:

The story progresses like a main series game’s plot. It’s notably most similar to RSE/ORAS, because there are two evil teams present: Team Solar and Team Lunar. They’re racing to find specific stones to revive and control their respective legendary of interest. Unfortunately, the climax of their role in the story is pretty disappointing to me, but I won’t say any further so not to spoil you. Aside from the villains, you have your usual tree-based professor, a few rivals, and your eight gym leaders. There’s also a mega evolution specialist, who battles in her castle, and is portrayed as unofficial gym leader. I especially liked this detail.

The characters are just okay, and dialogue can be a little jumbled at time. I like that you have three rivals rather than one, but they’re not very well fleshed out. Each has a gimmick, but not much personality past that. The gym leaders were also okay, but not overly memorable. The only honorable mention is Jax of the Elite Four, who I believe should have been the champion of the game.

There are some adult themes present in the story, but I don’t mean this in an explicit sort of way. Rather, the game addresses adult issues you’d find in the real world. For example, to use the taxi service in Rustbolt City, you need to battle their boss to convince him to pay his workers more, as they’re on strike at the time. You are also asked to steal for a robber at one point during a quest, which is pretty neat.

Overall, the plot and characters weren’t too impressive, but they weren’t terrible, either. There was a good foundation for both that was lost along the way, it seems. However, the story and characters are still serviceable and fulfill their overarching role.

Score: 7/10

Pokemon:

In this game, there are Fakemon instead of Pokemon, and this can be seen as either good or a bad. While the sprite work for the Fakemon grew on me, some are heavily based on already existing Pokemon. Also, some Pokemon don’t have the highest design quality. Lastly, many of the better Fakemon don’t evolve until they’re pretty high leveled, anywhere from the high 30s to the low 50s, kind of like in Gen 5. This can be seen either as a good or a bad thing, I suppose.

Luckily, there’s a lot of good things about the Fakemon too. First is the sheer amount of them: there are 358 Fakemon to choose from, which is more original Pokemon than have ever been put into a new game at once. This gives you a huge selection to choose from, so no two people will ever have the same team. The downside of this is it’s hard to keep track of them all. However, there are some great ones to choose from, whose movepools and abilities have been handpicked with care.

The original moves made for this game are also a nice touch. One that stood out to me is Thunder Strike, which is a nice middling electric move that’s more powerful than Thunder Shock, but less powerful than Thunderbolt.

I also absolutely love that your first party Pokemon walks with you. This is a feature that really should be brought back in main series games, and the fact that they took the time to draw all 358 original Fakemon (and each shiny form!) as walking companions is very impressive.

Score: 8/10

Gameplay:

In terms of difficulty, this game is very middling. It’s not too easy or hard. If you battle all the trainers and a good portion of wild Pokemon during your journey, gym leaders won’t be overly difficult. However, grinding in this game can be difficult without the presence of the speed button, so keep this in mind when you use a repel or skipping trainer battles.

One of my favorite attributes in a fan game is a lack of HMs, and I was pleasantly surprised that this game replaced HMs with key items. This opens up a fifth slot in your party; no HM slaves needed!

The gameplay in SLLD (Solar Light & Lunar Dark) is brought to life through its attention to detail in many areas. I’d say you can spend up to two hours in almost every town and its surrounding area, just doing quests, finding hidden items, and talking to NPCs without getting bored. There are so many places to explore, each with a completely different set of Pokemon.

My biggest grip in this area is the length of space between towns. The worst example of this is the journey between Waytide City and Coralite Town. In the space between them, there is Route 9, then Goopool Swamp, then Route 10A, then Rainbow Reef, then Route 10B, then finally Coralite Town. There is one single player to heal your Pokemon in this entire stretch, and if you don’t bring a ton of healing items and repels, there’s no way you’ll make it the whole way continuously. There’s also a ton of trainers on every route, too many in my opinion, and if you don’t battle them all, you’re destined to be underleveled for gym battles.

Score: 8.5/10

Art/Music:

The overworld art is well done, mostly in Gen 5 style. I haven’t seen art like this in another fan game yet, so props for that.

Original music can be found in about 80% of the game, and is generally well-composed. I rarely found myself listening to other music while playing the game. It’s very electronic, and comparable to Gen 5, but I actually like this soundtrack better than the Unova one. This brought me to wonder: why is such a common track, the wild battle music, from Sinnoh when almost all other music is original? This also goes for the Pokemon Center and a few other themes. My best guess is that composing those tracks would have taken a lot of time.

In terms of character art, most of it is solid. However, the female player character is obviously heavily inspired by Lyra from HGSS. The sprite isn’t bad per say, but it is very obvious. On the other hand, the male player character looks very original.

There are a few visual/sound errors that I would fix. First, the selection highlight isn’t apparent enough. This may seem minor, but this can be the difference between winning a battle or losing if you accidentally switch in the wrong Pokemon. Additionally, both the sound for stat rising and falling is the same- it always sounds like your stat is going up. There are also a couple of Pokemon missing their cries when sent into battle.

Score: 8.5/10

Misc:

The fan content for this game is pretty great. There’s a very active discord channel, and a pretty up-to-date, accurate wiki.

Overall:

One stand-out quality of this game is the sheer amount of content it contains. Before I mentioned the amount of Pokemon created, and this goes for the size of the map as well. There are more towns and areas of interest in this game than any individual region, and as a result you can get in a huge amount of playtime. I ended my run-through with almost 30 hours. However, the downside to inserting a massive amount of content into anything can make the issue of quality control. While the quality of most things in this game is above average, some things did suffer a bit. For example, there are so many routes and areas, it probably was impossible to compose music for all of them. As a result, the Surf and Bike theme are both the cheesy Pokemon Essentials themes.

On the topic of glitches: unfortunately, there are a handful of them. Most aren’t game breaking, but the one that stood out to me is the fishing contest one. When you are warped to the fishing contest, you’re trapped inside the building’s roof instead of in front of the building. As a result, you have to open your menu and quit the contest, automatically putting you in last place. Another is in the Subhail Icecaps towards the end of the game. The game can barely handle surfing in this area, and constantly stalls, almost crashing whenever you surf.

Overall, I would recommend this game to almost any Pokemon lover. I’d especially recommend this one for Unova lovers, as this game is a fresh new adventure quite reminiscent of that region. If you’re looking for a traditional Pokemon game with Fakemon in it, this game should be a winner for you.

Final Score: 8.5/10

[tumblunni]

....Man, I think Haunter is my favourite pokemon again. I usually have a brief period of each generation’s best new ghostie temporarily stealing the number one spot, but i usually tend to lose the hype for them around a year later and they join my just Gigantic Pile Of Second Favourites I Cannot Choose Between And then I used to dislike Sableye, Banette and Rotom but they all took the top fave spot as soon as I was like ‘hey if i actually use on on my team maybe I’ll like it- I REALLY LIKE IT’. but I mean, when i love them more because of my personal one i had on my team, or my headcanons or fanfics or etc, I think maybe that’s a dishonest fave cos they’re not my fave on their own benefits? And Rotom stayed in the top fave spot for a really long time cos it not only had a lot of love as my main heavy hitter in platinum but also has a big role as the main mon of one of my fave characters. And like five other fave characters in random anime one off episodes! And then it was a pokedex! EVERYTHING ROTOM TOUCHES TURNS TO GOLD

Buuuuuuuuut.... Haunter was like.. My Original Favourite My first favourite pokemon was pikachu, and then chansey, but Haunter was my first favourite ghost and it says a lot that it still holds up even all these generations later when the type finally got fleshed out with as many members as other types. Man its so funny in retrospect that I’m pretty defined as The Super Ghost Fan nowadays but I wasn’t really into them for the first three generations of pokemon. There just wasnt ANYONE except the haunter line in gen 1, and only misdreavus got added, and then in gen 3 I didnt initially like banette’s design in its first pretty awful sprite so i felt like duskull was the only good one and i didnt like its evolutions. Another reason to love sinnoh: it added great ghosties, evolutions for past ones, and made a lot of past ones available at the same time, and i mean we got our first ghost legendary too! The generation of spoop hype! (until kalos was even more of that, but it was less of a big deal cos ghosts werent so rare now)

ANYWAY Haunter is REALLY GOOD AND GREAT Its design is so simple yet perfect?? Like I know it was designed to be one of the most literal middle evolutions ever, its just meant to be basically.. half of gengar. With its oldest pokedex entries that was back before they really decided what they wanted to do with the ghost type, it was all ‘its a mysterious creature from an unknown dimension and nobody is sure if its a real ghost’. So its unclear whether its design is really meant to be the head pokemon gastly growing its first baby arms, or like.. all three stages are the same pokemon slowly emerging into our dimension, with Gengar being the true form? In any case, I never really felt Gengar was very special, aside from the fan theory it’s a doppelganger of clefable. (I mean its name is literally a mispelling of doppelganger!) like.. it always felt like a letdown of a final form? it would be so great on its own, its just a nice solid silly ‘monster under the bed’ type of ghost, a fluffy bugbear with a lot of sass and the minor original trait of its face being super big and kinda in the wrong place compared to clefable. Makes you imagine it scares people by going full cleff mimic and then just turning around in an alleyway XD I actually had a fan pokemon as a kid called Gambal which was literally just a chansey equivelant of gengar, and had powers of bad luck and stuff. But then the name ended up going to an entirely different fakemon instead who was a rabbit thing that was a game corner prize. Oh and I also had a geng of celebi! Called Tanka just cos that was my name for all my ocs at the time. Its just a type of poetry that i thought sounded Hella Cool for no logical reason. But yeah, I drew like a million pics of every pokemon as a ghost version and its just funny how subconciously i was a ghost fan even before there were more than four ghosts in existance XD

BUT WHERE WAS I Oh yeah, gengar is dissappointing! And its unfair cos if it was an unrelated pokemon on its own, I would like it! It just doesn’t hold up favourably to how awesome haunter and gastly’s concepts are. i mean, look here we have two different quality takes on the ‘floating head’ concept and then its final form isn’t a floating head. HOW DARE YOU. I guess gengar kinda still keeps the aesthetic with its oversized face, kinda? Like its a giant head just mimicing being a regular pokemon? But I mean i think a giant head with arms and legs stops being a giant head. Its why Nanimon and Mamemon aren’t as cute as regular sperical types. I think the only exception is when its a giant head with ONLY legs, and they’re small rabbit legs specifically- like Lotad or Tokomon!

Anyway, nowadays I’ve grown more appreciation for Gengar (again) because I had one in my team and I love him so I can’t not love my best friend. He has an interesting story cos he’s actually That One Haunter, lol! That memorable npc in DPPt who trades you a haunter but its holding an everstone so it doesn’t evolve. I was still equally annoyed at her even though I’d planned to press B and keep it as a haunter anyway! XD But then the cute default name Gaspar made me get really attatched to him, and man i have so many super detailed story and personality headcanons for this little goofball. Eventually he did actually evolve into Gengar, cos I traded him temporarily to a friend in order to transfer him between generations, and i forgot gengar was a trade evo so i didnt tell her to not do it. I still feel really bad that i overreacted about it, i worry that maybe I made her feel guilty! Ultimately, it was probably a good thing, because I kept my other bestie Reaper the Sneasel unevolved forever cos i dislike Weavile, and like.. obviously he kinda sucks in battle because of this. I still love all my pokemon regardless of whether they’re useful in competitive, tho! Oh and mega gengar is pretty sweet, too! It brings back a lot of haunter’s appeal! I just wish that i never saw its feet, seriously. I thought that it was just a head and arms again, but apparantly it just spends 99% of the time phased into objects and its legs just look really awful and unfitting when you see them. It makes it like a top heavy buff design and that really doesn’t work?? It sucks cos i LOVE the other ‘skipped leg day’ pokemon Mega Swampert, so i dunno why I don’t like the same thing on ghosts! Dusknoir and Jellicent are my least favourite ghosts ever. So yeah my opinion on gengar now is like... mixed? i don’t dislike it like I used to, but I don’t really love it on its own benefits or anything, i just don’t dislike it cos i associate it with a sweet and cute bestie who saved me a lot in sinnoh due to his hypnosis attack. But I still think it’s a worse design than haunter, which is The Best Design In All Of Pokemon. Even when I flip flop on what my favourite POKEMON is, I still think it’s my favourite design! Rotom is maybe the most creative design CONCEPT amoung the ghosts, but Haunter is just... so good at what it set out to do.

LETS TALK AGAIN ABOUT HOW GREAT HAUNTER IS I mean just LOOK AT IT, its just SO GOOD Floating heads are great, and gastly was a great way to take that concept and make it ghostly! And its so cool that its basically a hitodama/will of the wisp/generic spooky flame face from every jrpg ever, except made more original because its made of like.. pure darkness smog mist instead. The colour choices for it are really good too, i always really loved the dithering effect they used to make it in the sprite-based games! Its one of the few pokemon where i love the regualr better than the shiny, even though the shiny isn’t one of those terrible neon green ones. It has one of the best shinies and that shade of smoky purple still captures my heart more! i think i would prefer the shiny if regular gengar was bedsheet white though, not blue and only turning white when it mega evolves. That’s weird. AND THEN HAUNTER IS JUST AN EVEN BETTER FLOATING HEAD It loses the cool smoke but it gains these pointy ears/cliche vampire hair shaped head protrusions that just work SO WELL. Like its a floating head that isn’t just a plain sphere! That’s the one part of floating head monsters that generally sucks, a lot of them outside of the creativity of pokemon tend to be super samey generic bald spherical angry man heads. A floating head of a guy with a cliche horror B-movie hairstyle is great! And especially when its a really unhumanoid jack-o-lantern face that’s just like.. replicating that hairstyle without actually being a hairstyle. thats my fave kind of humanoid type pokemon, I love when they’re still animals or monsters or even inanimate objects that are MIMICKING humans, not just a lazy thing that looks like an actual human wearing a costume. I’m probably in the minority but this is why I prefer Mr Mime to stuff like Machamp or Delfox or Incineroar. And then also I love how it takes Gastly’s grumpy eyes and softens them a bit to look more mischeivious instead of angry. Looking always in a bad mood is probably the biggest reason i don’t like Gastly the most, i just feel sad for it. Another reason why I love sinnoh lol, it had a big happy mischief face on its sprite! (shame platinum ruined it a bit, but HGSS was even cuter) And then its just such a creative way of giving a floating head some limbs while not ruining its floating head aesthetic. Floaty rayman arms is such a ghostly thing even though there arent many ghosts that use that design aesthetic!

Honestly thats the biggest reason haunter is so great, really. it just.. encapsulates ghost, even though it doesnt have like ANY cliche ghost design elements! its such a good original concept for like the simplest and most basic pure image of ghostliness in this world. It somehow feels like its exactly what ghosts are, without taking any shortcuts from other popular ghost characters. its so simple and iconic! Its a new thing that could fit in perfectly with all those ancient B-movie creatures and I’d never question it! Gastly is at least slightly based on a will o wisp, and gengar is a bugbear/monster under the bed/shadow creature/doppelganger super combination creature. But in the aim of making something in-between the two, they accidentally made something that doesn’t look very much like ANY of them and stands out miles above them! I think this entire evolution line has had such great staying power because every member of it looks really distinct from the others, while also vaguely fitting together with theme and colourscheme so they don’t seem distinct in a BAD way. Any of these would be equally beloved as entirely separate mons, but linking them together makes them oddly endearing as a weird ragtag bunch of buddies! Its like the addams family!

Oh, but my one and only complaint is that Haunter’s gameboy era design looks better than how it got changed once the graphics got better.

To be entirely honest, I think that the changed version was their intent right from the beginning, and the cooler aesthetic one was just an accident of the limited graphics. Cos I mean the anime had that design from the beginning, after all! BUT STILL, I love it so much more and I wish it could have been proper canon. or at least remained as its shiny form or something! (A mild blue hint instead of a mild purple hint is really boring, this shiny only looks good on gastly...) The glowy outline is probably the best part, though i do also like how the colours stay more matched with gastly instead of the smog colour becoming the body colour. Actually its not even that, its just a random less appealing deep purple, it might have been cooler if it remained that lighter shade of lilac? Also it sucks that haunter retained the glow around its hands at least in the gameverse until we got 3D models. It never had that in the anime so i guess they removed it to remain consistant but like.. WHY! It doesn’t look as cool with red glow on purple as opposed to purple glow on black, but I still really liked it. Like you could have at least kept the glow when it uses attacks or something?

Oh, and isn’t it so weird that so many ghosts have had all black removed from their design as the generations go on? Like.. I mean I don’t think they did this to haunter cos they feared it was similar to Jynx, it isn’t remotely humanoid and it doesn’t have a stereotypical face or anything. And it wouldnt make sense cos they kept it on gastly. But then also banette has gone from black to an increasingly lighter grey, and its EEEEEEEVEN lighter on merchandising! I waited ages for an official banette plush, and it is a really sweet little thing thats so perfect... but then its light grey? I don’t mind cos it makes my plushie feel like more of an individual at least. Also its annoying that mega banette started off as the same dark grey/black that banette originally was, but then its one of the few pokemon that got a big change between XY and SuMo, aside from new animations and stuff. now its light grey too! Booooooo! Other ghosts that’ve experienced The Greying: Duskull, Dusknoir already started off lighter than its pre-evo and then still got more so as time went on, and Misdreavus turned green and then blue instead of grey but its still the same sort of thing. Now the only real black/dark grey ghosts we have left are Yamask and Phantump, and its just.. so weird?? Cos like none of the black dark-types have had big colour changes except Sneasel. I dunno, maybe they’re doing this to make the ghost and dark types more distinct, making it more like purple is the signature colour of ghosts? But I mean its the type icon colour for poison and psychic too so this just makes the colourschemes LESS distinct... Also I just think that the dark grey banette and the black haunter looked so much better, so it sucks that out of all the ghosts it had to be the ones I love! And out of all dark types it had to be my favourite too! (And sneasel is my fave ice type too!)

...anyway GHOSTS and HAUNTER I LOVE THEM and I’m sorry i rambled for like an hour writing all this THEYRE JUST SO FUCKING CUTE AND SWEET

oh and one last thing!! I love how haunter established the trend of ghost types being more mischievious and misunderstood than actually evil Well, i mean all three of its evo line starred in that episode of the anime, but Haunter was the one that went with ash at the end and got one more episode of cuteness afterward. That whole mini arc was the MOST MEMORABLE PART OF THE SHOW for me, I couldnt believe it was so short when i rewatched it! I totally misremembered haunter sticking around for half a season or something, cos it was so endearing to me. And its still so endearing to me every time the games decide to make a new ghost be harmless or sad, or harmless and sad. or even harmful and sad! i mean i cried the most at banette even though its past of being an abandoned toy is supposed to just be a justification why its the most angry and dangerous ghost. I’M SURE I COULD HEAL IT WITH HUGS, yells bunni, as they essentially glomp the pokemon equivelant of a shark...

god i just love ghosts so much and specifically haunter the most much hug your haunter today also your banette also your rotom also pumpkaboo and litwick and phantump and duskull...

[xb-squaredx]

Pokemon Sun and Moon Review: Pocket Tropic

Not every franchise is lucky enough to have a 20th anniversary and still be relevant, but Pokémon is such a franchise. The third 3DS title, and the games ushering in the seventh generation, Pokémon Sun and Moon are here. Are they able to keep things fresh enough for old fans, or is the franchise showing its age? Read on and find out!

Our setting this time around is the tropical Alola region. Composed of four islands of various climates, it might be just my favorite region to explore yet. That’s due to a variety of things. For one, the region is gorgeous, and despite being on the same hardware as Pokémon X and Y, there’s a massive leap up in overall quality. Players and other NPCs are no longer rendered in a super-deformed style, now with more realistic proportions. They even appear in the backgrounds of battles! Alongside that upgrade, the games have at last broken free from the grid-based movement and design of past games. With full 3D control and environments that feel more like real places than ever before, it feels like a truly modern 3D game. Alola has plenty of nooks and crannies to explore and of course Pokémon to catch, though in past games exploration was always tethered to the disliked HM system. Hidden Machine moves were cumbersome to remove from Pokémon once taught, and most weren’t well-suited to battle, only used to get rid of various obstacles in your way. With Sun and Moon, the HM system has been totally replaced by the Poke Ride feature. Players can now summon Pokémon in almost anywhere and ride atop them to get through obstacles. No longer do players have to keep a designated “HM Slave” on their teams if they just want to explore. It’s a fantastic feature that I hope they keep for any future game.

Elsewhere, the one aspect that really sold me on this game was its story. Barring the Black and White games, the Pokémon games have been pretty light on plot. However, they’ve stepped it up once again with Sun and Moon’s narrative. While the plot initially seems quite similar to past Pokémon games, with players traveling around the region and taking on the villainous team of the month, eventually a greater tale unfolds. The cast shows a fair amount of depth and development this time around, and the story itself has quite a bit of mystery. Mysterious beings known as “Ultra Beasts” begin appearing in the region, drawing the attention of the Aether Foundation, a Pokémon protection group. They work to uncover the secrets of the Ultra Beasts, and many of these secrets seem to be linked to a girl named Lillie, assistant to this game’s professor. The writing and general pacing felt more similar to “normal” JRPGs this time around, and while still family-friendly for any young Pokémon fan, there’s some darker things touched on here and the story seems written with the older fanbase in mind. I don’t think the Pokémon games NEED to have a story, but it’s definitely something I was happy to experience. While I enjoyed playing the game and expanding my Pokedex, uncovering the plot also drove me on. With the Pokémon games having large casts of characters, it’s nice to see them all actually USED for once. I realize some fans will dislike the increased emphasis on story, but it was a real saving grace for me. Also, Team Skull is the best.

Not to say the rest of the game is bad, far from it. The overall formula remains about as solid as ever, with some noticeable tweaks. Some work out better than others though. Probably the most radical change is the removal of Gyms and the Pokémon League. Instead, players take on the Alola Island Challenge. Traveling across all four islands, the player seeks out Trial Captains and takes on specific challenges unique to that Captain. These aren’t usually combat related; one Captain has you forage for ingredients for a tasty dish, while another memorable trial has you take a page out of Fatal Frame and attempt to photograph some ghost Pokémon, for some examples. Each Trial is capped off with a battle against a Totem Pokémon, a boss Pokémon with stronger than average stats. Totem Pokémon show a greater amount of strategy than most battles in the game, and flip the script on trainers by summoning in other Pokémon for help when they get cornered. It can result in some tricky encounters in a game that noticeably ups the difficulty as the game goes on. Now, after you beat all the Trials on an island, you can tackle the island’s strongest trainer, the Kahuna. The various Trials are all varied enough to keep things fresh, and help to flesh out the Captains and Kahunas, though that being said, I find it odd that the trials all have combat associated with them, outside of the Totem fights.

Two in particular stand out. One trial tests your memory. You watch some Pokémon perform a dance and then on the second viewing, have to find the difference. If you pick wrong, you get attacked by them. If you get it right…you still get attacked by them. A later Trial is an audio quiz, giving you certain sounds and seeing if you can decipher them. You can’t move on with the trial until you get the right answers, whereupon you’re forced into a fight. In those cases, why even have these trials at all if they’re just going to be a gauntlet of battles? I’m fine with the Totem fights capping off each Trial, but in the future, I’d love to see some trials with no combat whatsoever, so they could stand out a bit more.

With each trial and Kahuna you defeat, you obtain a Z Crystal, tying into one of the other big new mechanics. If a Pokémon holds a Z Crystal of a given type and uses a move of the corresponding type, that move is powered up into a Z Move. Offensive moves become flashy cinematic attacks, while non-damage dealing moves result in an enhanced version of that move. Even something as useless as Splash is made useful, with Z-Splash greatly buffing your attack stat, for example. You can only use one Z Move per battle, and while they give the impression of being an instant win button, there is some deeper strategy there. They allow any Pokémon to be a heavy hitter, at least for one move, and certain Pokémon have unique Z moves, encouraging their use over the more widely-used Pokémon. That said, there are some downsides. The animations for the moves are a tad longwinded, with the attack animation itself also preceded by an animation of the trainer performing a pose specific to that type of Z Move. Even if you turn off the attack animations in the options, that trainer animation still plays, which is a little ridiculous in my opinion. I can’t vouch for the competitive future of Z Moves, but they seem more like a fun distraction for younger fans, and considering there’s a toy out there that lights up and makes noise when you use a Z Move in-game, I feel that kind of supports my theory. They don’t turn battles upside-down, at any rate.

Other features remain hit or miss. Pokémon Amie is updated to Pokémon Refresh, allowing you to pet and feed your partners, and now patch them up after battles. For the most part, it’s just a cute little bit of immersion; blow-drying them after they get soaked by a water attack, or wiping some mud off of them, though being able to cure them of status ailments without using an item is pretty neat. Then there’s the Pokepelago, which aims to put the Pokémon you keep in storage to work, featuring a variety of islands where they’ll help you grow berries or look for items for you. Some islands even allow Pokémon to level up or work on hatching eggs while you’re off doing your own thing. It takes some time to develop the islands to be truly useful, but it can be a godsend for multitaskers.

What’s less of a godsend is the Festival Plaza, this game’s multiplayer mode. It is a hub where players can get together to trade and battle and develop a variety of shops and other facilities. If you interact with other players you build up a currency that goes towards developing your plaza, with high-end facilities for it granting you rare items and allowing you to power level your Pokémon, among other things. However, I find it’s quite the grind to get anything worthwhile out of it. Adding to that, the game places some unnecessary barriers in your path if you merely wish to trade and battle with friends. The game will display a list of a random grouping of players currently online if you check your menus, though shifting through them to find friends already registered on your 3DS is nearly impossible. Thankfully, you can also make certain players VIPs and reach them far quicker in their own tab…but the game doesn’t automatically register friends as VIPs and you have to track them down yourself to do it manually. It’s not a MAJOR issue to get it done, but it’s more involved than it needs to be.

This is coming off of the fantastic Player Search System from both X/Y and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire. The PSS was such a streamlined system that really emphasized the strengths of the game’s multiplayer components. It was easier to see that you were playing this game with thousands of other players at once, and you felt connected, and trading or battling with friends was as quick as a tap on their face, the game automatically placing friends in their own area. To me, the Festival Plaza is a bit clunky and a major step backwards. I appreciate Game Freak trying something different and making it a hub that you can customize to a degree is a good idea, but as it stands, it needs some tweaks to make the multiplayer as seamless as it should be.

The game in general seems designed to take older Pokémon conventions and give them a twist to keep them fresh. You see this with the Island Challenges and the Alolan variants of the Pokémon from Red/Blue. Generally speaking, it succeeds at keeping things familiar, but different enough to escape franchise fatigue, but the game still has some issues that, while fairly mild, do add up to hurt the experience a bit. The game clearly pushes the limits of what the 3DS can handle, having already turned off the 3D functionality. On older 3DS systems the battles can chug a bit, and the more Pokémon on screen at once, the worse it gets. This is unfortunate for one of the game’s new multiplayer modes, Battle Royal. Four players with three Pokémon each face off, scoring points whenever they land a knockout, with the game ending once someone loses all three Pokémon. But it runs rough, and it’s likely the reason Triple and Rotation Battles were dropped from the game.

The last real problem the game has is a feature fans have dubbed “SOS Battles.” Just as Totem Pokémon can call in reinforcements, wild Pokémon can too. While they won’t succeed 100% of the time like Totem Pokémon, they will try often. Generally, it’s only a little annoying if they summon help when fighting them, but it is absolutely maddening if you’re trying to capture a Pokémon. Once two Pokémon are on the other side, you aren’t allowed to throw a Poke ball for no good reason. There were countless times when I would whittle a Pokémon down and they would keep summoning help, keeping me from capturing them. Pokémon call for help more often when their health is low and these SOS calls don’t take a turn, and it didn’t take long for me to grow quite frustrated with it. What’s worse, certain Pokémon will only show up if another Pokémon calls for them, and you have to “chain” Pokémon calling for help if you want Pokémon with desirable Hidden Abilities and perfect IVs (if you care about that sort of thing). I would have felt better if it at least took the wild Pokémon’s turn to call for help, but as it stands, it took one of the core goals of the series, catching Pokémon, and kept putting roadblocks in my way.

Despite the issues with the Festival Plaza, overall performance and the SOS Battles, Sun and Moon are still remarkably solid games. The story takes it over the top for me, and I ended up really enjoying my time with Alola. It shows that the franchise still has plenty of life in it, and I look forward to what the future will bring. Sun and Moon features an engaging plot, gorgeous visuals, a very well-done soundtrack, the best villain team in a long while, and boasts the amount of depth and polish that fans have come to expect. Here’s to another 20 years, Pokémon!

Until next time.

-B

[goodgameposts]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Review

Note:  This Xenoblade Chronicles 2 review is Good Game Posts first review so go easy! The review will be split into sections; introduction, story and characters, visuals and audio, game play and the conclusion. Let us begin! Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game which I have a love and hate relationship with. Considering it is the successor to one of my favourite RPGs of all time, I went in with a benchmark of what to expect. What I got was exactly what I wanted - but only a slice of it. The slice also came with a lot of completely unwanted toppings that hampered the experience too. This Xenoblade Chronicles 2 review will make comparisons throughout with the first game. Have elements of the series improved, gotten worse or even need to be removed completely and never thought of again?

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Review: Story and Characters

XC 2 opens with a scene similar to the first -  a brief overview of the context of the world. Species live on titans whom are great beasts of various sizes who roam above what is known as the cloud sea ; an endless ocean. In the centre is Elysium, an alleged paradise that supposedly cannot be reached. Elysium is now thought of a fairy-tale of some sorts where individuals in the game's context would stop believing when they grow up. Main character Rex is an optimistic boy who ends up being likeable. The immediate character that sticks out like a sore thumb is Reyn from the first game, the similarities are uncanny. Rex lives on the titan he calls Gramps - the character who (successfully) acts as the boy's mentor. In Xenoblade Chronicle's 2 world there are Drivers and Blades. A blade is a life form with the ability to be a weapon too  - they can be attached to Drivers, who are extraordinary individuals of one of the game's species with the ability to wield a Blade. For instance, Rex is a Driver so by using what is known as a Core Crystal, he can bond with Blades who can help him in battle and outside of it. Think of Pokemon, but your Pokemon are creatures who can look human or any other in game species. The main plot of Rex's story is heading to the paradise known as Elysium under direction of main female character, Pyra. Pyra has had, understandable, controversy over her weird design that ''reeks of animu''. This can, unfortunately, be put offing to players who dislike anime which may cause the game to be judged prematurely. Even I (nearly) did so. Actually, I have a little overall. The game would clearly be better if the character designs were better. Odd and fan service character designs makes it difficult to take such characters seriously - especially when everything else about such characters are supposed to be portrayed as serious. It's a contradiction in design. The game's camera also ogles female leads body parts during some emotional scenes which damages the impact of such scenes. Have a look at the following screenshot, which is cropped to avoid spoilers, for a nice laugh:

Yes Pyra, because she needs to wear a thong for pants like you do... The first Xenoblade Chronicles was renowned for going against these anime and JRPG tropes. It is hugely disappointing to see the sequel take a massive step backwards as what looks like a desperate attempt to ''fit in'' with other JRPGs. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 starts off really, really slow. I was astounded by how bad the intro to the game is, especially when you consider that the original game has one of the best introduction scenarios of all time and pushes the player to care about it's world so quickly. However, when things get started in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, they really do get started. The last moments of the first chapter is the moment the game starts picking up so it is recommended you play up to that part as a minimum to gather first impressions. Pyra states that she needs to go to Elysium but... why? It is absolutely astonishing that throughout the majority of the game, none of the characters even question this to an acceptable degree. The plot never really deviates from it's initial path of ''let's go to Elysium!'' Unlike the original where crazy plotwists change the end goal and where each of these moments feel like a final boss fight, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 decides to opt in for a much more simpler story. There's nothing bad with that per se but I would not call it my preference. The story's biggest issue is the laughable lack of explanation and it's inconsistency. There are moments especially later on which tease certain characters, concepts and they amount to absolutely nothing. The game, no real spoiler, will obviously feature death like any RPG. Now, usually these have a strong emotional impact for the player. However, the problem with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is that on occasion, a character will die and the game will make a big deal out of it. I would love to care , if I actually knew the significance of the character. Characters, who have barely been explored, then get killed so are difficult to have sympathise with. It's definitely not that I don't want to, I do, but the game makes the decision to explore the character's background after they die. On the bright side, the game delivers on what I was hoping for a lot - what I describe as ''epic set pieces''. There are definitely not as many as there was like the first but what is here is good enough. If you have played a JRPG before, you will know what I mean. Those story moments where amazing, fitting music plays and emotional strings get plucked. Even the soundtrack that plays is a complete reminder that the Xenoblade series does this best: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6TLtJ4epT0 Which is uncannily similar to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wdc_cDaUNQ The characters on the most part are, just about good. Just about. Character development for Rex is done well as the player learns more about his struggles, past changes and goals. For some characters such as the mighty Morag, I wished that the writers put more effort into it all. Morag is presented as a character with mystery and ... that's literally it. There is subtle development for her but for a 50 hour plus story, there simply isn't enough. Don't get me wrong, there are hearts to hearts which return in a better form, which do help characters like Morag get sprinkled with a bit more personality. However, in a 50 hour story a small amount is simply not enough. Hearts to hearts are optional scenes which help flesh out the relationship between the characters and even offer more characterization. They are great, similar to Person's social links just without a huge emphasis on being a social sim. Hearts to hearts in the original required affinity between the characters. For instance, Shulk and Dunban's affinity would increase from level 1 to 5 depending on the player's dialogue choices during conversation, if team work is deployed in battle properly and how you interact with sidequests. The affinity between characters needs to reach certain level before you can see the heart to hearts. Character affinity also impacted on raising characters' morale during battle and hence, how well you can battle in the original game. This time however, there is no requirement to view them and even better, they are all voiced. Voicing the heart to hearts was also wanted in Xenoblade Chronicles X so it is good that Monolith have finally delivered on this. However, one step forward and two steps backwards. Since there is no emphasis on character relation building based in the game play, the affinity system is made more exclusive to the blades instead. Now, this is not a problem until you realise what the requirements are. Some blades are straight forward to work on, you just have to use them well in battle to build trust. Others, however, send you off in some of the worst side quests in RPG history. Take Ursula for instance, an ice user with a cute bear. Great blade to have on the side and her side quest story is actually good. But the ''game play'' is atrocious. The game has a mercenary system where you can send your blades to complete tasks in a certain time frame with EXP, Weapon Points (which are used to upgrade each Blade's arts) and items as the rewards. This system is very similar to Assassin's Creed Origins and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker where you can send side characters to complete optional tasks. In Xenoblade Chronicles 2 however, they are forgettable for the most part. You send X amount of blades onto a task and each blade needs to fulfil A, B and C requirement(s). Then the task will automatically be completed in usually 30 to 50 minutes. The problem with this is... How is any of it fun? It merely just becomes a hassle to cause the player to remember to open the menu  - again - to move some settings around every 30 minutes or so. Oh and menus - more on why how much of a hassle Xenoblade Chronicle's 2 menu system is. So, with this mercenary system, Ursula needs to complete tasks to get singing practise. Each class goes from level 1 and upwards to what I believe is level 3 at maximum. There are 3 classes and each last 10 minutes long. The problem? You need to complete each one nine times to progress to the next. Nine times. This means remembering to open up the menu, choosing the right blades to complete a 10 minute task, again. And again. Oh and there are 3 classes in total. As a result, you need to complete the same 10 minute tasks a total of twenty seven times. TWENTY SEVEN TIMES. Monolift Soft, why is this fun? Can anyone explain? My honest advice to people yet to try Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is to not bother with the side quests. They are off-putting and your time is better spent taking part in the game's decent story mode and excellent battle system. What the game nails completely is the villains this time around. The group is called Torna; I can't help but compare them to Kingdom Heart's organization XIII. I would dare say Torna is an even better version of them. They are likeable with one certain character's entire motivation and back story being one of the best in series. And that's saying a lot.

Riku is looking great in Kingdom Hearts III   For the most part, the game does explain the motivations and backstories of each of its villains and does this even better than the original Xenoblade Chronicles. The towns and cities have some life to them but it is hard to care about each random NPC talking about their lives - due to the side quests being so repetitive and boring. You are compelled to keep pressing A to skip through the endless amount of dialogue as a result of how mundane the side quests are.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Review: Visuals and Audio

Aside from some silly and trope-y character designs, the art style of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is good. Such an art style allows for easy portrayal of facial expressions which helps with dramatic moments of the game. At times however, textures in the game look like they are from the PSX era. It doesn't help with when the game zooms up in such areas during story cut-scenes, as seen below for example:

                      Here we have a main character walking through the PSX era The game performs quite well too. During my 88 hour play through, I did not encounter any noticeable or problematic frame rate issues. This is an improvement from the other Xenoblade games as I do remember performance drops during chaotic battles in the original. Upon opening the menu, players can see a colourful display of character designs and drawings. These all look great - apart from some character designs in general, the art itself is drawn well and brings out life from how the characters would look like if the game was an anime. As aforementioned, the game's soundtrack has no problem in making the context of the moment emphasised. Fitting, dramatic music plays during emotional scenes - most of the time. There is a wide range of tracks too. Some are fittingly haunting which perfectly capture the sense of a mysteries town, as another example below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5az9ZdtkrEU On to the character voices. British voice actors have been used again which is great - it feels more fresh than most games. At first, even I found it difficult to like the voices of the main characters whilst in the original game, the voices immediately captured my intention in a positive manner. There is a good range of accents too which include Northern and Welsh. Most characters have a voice which suit them too for the most part - especially Welsh Nia who also happens to one of the best characters. However, there is a fair amount of lines which are delivered poorly - mostly from obscure side characters. This is in relation to the tone, speed and any emotion behind the lines. Thankfully, during the game's most epic sequences, the quality of the voice acting does deliver. What is completely inexcusable is the pathetic lip syncing in the game's dub. This is 2017, not the PS2 era ala Metal Gear Solid 3. It is astounding Nintendo and Monolift Soft think it's fine to release a game in such a state. The biggest concern is that the poor lip syncing impacts on the game's many dramatic scenes. I couldn't help but feel that the game was rushed - hint, it was - and that is disappointing. The game released only around eleven months after it was first announced. This is quite unusual for a game of this scale. Indeed, director Tetsuya Takahashi has recently shared that there were development problems with the game.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Review: Gameplay

Alas, this is where Xenoblade Chronicles 2 shines. At least, during battles and some sections of exploration exclusively. The game's battle system seems to be a developed version of the original. As before, you can play as one character in a party of three. In battle, the player you control will automatically attack. An auto-attack is the weakest form, usually, when dealing damage. Each of the driver main characters will be able to control up to three blades. One blade is a main character themselves. Blades have arts which are stronger abilities which get recharged with every hit from an auto-attack. Arts were also in the original game and Xenoblade Chronicles X but are handled differently with this change. Each blade also has a special gauge which fills up with every successful hit by an auto-attack. Further, you can find core crystals which allows you to get new blades for each of the main characters. Some of the blades are common types - which you will probably just use to send on mercenary quests. Others are considered rare blades who have their own characterisation, one blade side quest dedicated to them as a minimum and have their own personality. There is a really cool Easter Egg if you unlock them all too. You have the ability to recharge the special gauge quicker by doing an 'auto-attack cancel. This means, as soon as your attack connects with an enemy, using an art will increase the special gauge quicker. Special attacks range from level 1 to level 4 and get stronger depending on the level. Further, you can chain special attacks with your other two party members. So, the first character to use a level 1 special attack can then be followed up with a level 2 special attack and finally, a level 3 or 4 special attack. The player can use ZL and ZR to use special attacks of the AI characters to assist. An issue presented here is that special attacks are chained by using the correct level and element. For example, you can chain a Fire Level 1, Water Level 2 and a Fire Level 3 or 4 to finish the combo. You cannot do Dark Level 1, Fire Level 2 and then Water Level 3 or 4. Each element can only be followed by two specific elements in order for the combo to progress. Hence, the AI might have a blade which can carry out the correct element but sometimes will switch to a blade which does not have the right element. In such occasions, it is frustrating that the AI can ruin a combo as the player is given a short time frame to chain each attack. When a full combo is complete, the enemy attacked will be given one element orb. This corresponds to the element used in the final special attack of the combo. Chain attacks from the original make a return thankfully. In a chain attack, each party member can use a special attack once each turn. However, if you break and element orb attached to an enemy, you will get another round with each attack given a damage multiplier. Hence, the idea is to create as many element orbs by completing blade combos on an enemy and finish them off with a chain attack. The system is quite complex and clearly somewhat hard to explain too but works a charm. Further, enemies have weaknesses to certain elements which you can use to your advantage and as usual, status effects, stat buffs and debuffs, are all present here. As a result, this all works together immensely well, especially for the game's longer main boss fights and optional boss fights. It is extremely satisfying to deal so much damage from a complete blade combo and reap the rewards. Now, the game's battle tutorial does a lot of waffling so I needed to figure out the above mechanics out myself. Which isn't necessarily bad - it is rewarding when you unearth a game's mechanics. Exploration for the game is done decently. You can freely explore fairly large areas if you want to take a break from the main quest. Such areas will have treasure chests with useful items and optional boss fights which net good rewards. Exploration can also uncover hearts to hearts which are valuable. Finding locations and secret areas nets you experience points too. However, you need to rest at an inn to use these experience points. Side quest experience points can only be applied after resting at an inn too. Credit here is definitely due as this prevents the problem from being over levelled if the player does too many side quests. The player has the freedom to balance their own difficulty which suits them. One problem is that early game areas have large level 80+ enemies which can randomly interrupt an otherwise good fight you are having and one hit kill you. How is this good game play design? Make no mistake, the series has made this silly design choice since the first. Onto the side quests and oh boy, are they bad.  Essentially, quoting from this article: '' The best improvement is the convenient ZR button which allows the player to quickly see the next objective for a sidequest without needing to open the menu. The original Xenoblade Chronicles was known for having countless MMORPG style sidequests. The game has more than 400 sidequests. The advice from those who have completed the game is to not feel obligated to do any sidequests. Stop when you feel you have had enough to prevent being overwhelmed. Many of the collection sidequests are automatically completed as soon as you start the sidequest.In such circumstances, the game conveniently tells the player the quest is completed without the need for the player to manually walk back to the NPC who gave you it. This was a small touch which rewarded the player for engaging with the NPCs in the game’s amazing towns and prevented unnecessary padding. ''   The game has Field Skills which are Pokemon Hidden Machines. Just worse. Field Skills have levels so even if you have the right field skill, you cannot traverse some part of the environment unless it is the right level. This destroys the pacing of some side quests. You may be going along then all of a sudden, a Field Skill comes and prevents you from progressing. By the time you return to complete the quest, it will be likely that you have forgotten what the side quest was all about considering the dozen of things that happen in the game normally. This ruins the Blade Quests which are story focused quests that help flesh out side characters you can obtain. More examples as to why the side quests and Field Skill system damage the experience can be found here. In short the conclusion is, quoting from that article: '' Xenoblade Chronicles 2 side quests are basically checklists of fetch-tasks which are very tedious to complete. The rewards do not stack up at all to the effort required to complete them. Further, the character development between the NPCs is minimal and not very interesting so that weakens the reason to do them further. To conclude, Xenoblade Chronicle 2’s field skill system impedes and ruins the flow of the game’s sidequests. I hope the developers use a better system for sidequests in a sequel. The need to come back to the quests after the development of blades and field skills simply breaks the flow of the quest and increases the chances of the player forgetting (or even caring ) about what is going on.  However, most importantly, the process in completing the sidequests is simply not fun. '' There is a salvaging system which means Rex will dive into the Cloud Sea and collect items. This mechanic is a complete gimmick and completely forgettable. If anything, the mechanic works well with the side quest systems to make them worse and even more repetitive. Further the menu system is cumbersome. You have a menu that opens to characters, their blades, who is assigned to each character, in within each blade, their affinity skills, gems (which increase stats as usual). Hence, you need to equip the driver to power up their abilities but you also need to do this with each and every blade if you want to optimize your team set up. This makes it all very time consuming and navigating between each character is not that intuitive. On top of the mercenary quest system, this all adds up to a lost of stretched out time being in the game's menus. Even when you use a Core Crystal to get a new blade, there is an animation that cannot be skipped. Well, the recent March update now allows you do. However, it is very silly... It is split into two parts, you can actually skip the second part but you couldn't skip the first originally. With the update, you have the choice to skip it all but  that's the thing. When the rare blades are obtained, there is a cool awakening animation. Hence, by skipping the first part you will miss out on seeing the second part if you happen to obtain a rare blade. My point is, why is there no option to skip the first part - the part no one wants to see - but still be allowed to see the second part? YouTube exists for such occasions but spoilers on YouTube do as well. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has one decent mini game. It's called ''Tiger! Tiger'' and is a 8 bit game where you play as a Nopon - a small comic relief species - who salvages for treasure. There is not much to say here, the mini game was quite difficult so was patched with an easy mode recently. It was necessary to do the side quest to help upgrade a certain characters parts. This lack of flexibility makes it an issue for some.  

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Review: Conclusion

  In all, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was a game with so much potential but falls flat on so many missed opportunities. Despite all of this, what the game does well is done very well, especially how the game's intricate game play mechanics mesh so well together. It is a shame that there are so many quality of life issues and boring side quests which stampede it from it's path to greatness. Alas, I believe this is all down to having a rushed development time. I am serious when I say I wished the game was delayed.   GG (Pros) Soundtrack is one of the best in gaming Battle system, once learnt and used properly, is very engaging and rewarding Epic and memorable story sequences, even if there are less than the original No GG (Cons) Atrocious lip syncing and quality of life issues Side quests and terrible Pokemon style hidden machine mechanics Step backwards in regards to JRPG design   Final Score : 8/10. Definitely worth a try if you have the system the game is for!   GG     Read the full article

[tumblunni]

Bunni talks about thier cute pets! Cos I’m on such a rune factory hype today I figured I may as well ramble about what monsters I captured, and maybe other stuff about how I personally chose to play the game. I love how there’s so many different ways to play and all different routes to making enough money and exp to progress the main story! Usually in these kinds of games I focus on dungeoncrawling (like i did in stardew valley) but I’m surprised how much I genuinely enjoyed the farming in this game even though it was A HUGE CHORE in stardew! This series is the pinnacle of farming type games in my opinion, it appeals even to non-fans like me!

ANYWAY UMM I LOVE MY MONSTERS I pretty much never take them with me to dungeons, the only time I use dungeon monsters is if I catch them in the current dungeon, then I just send them home and never want them to get hurt ever again. I really REALLY like that the game levels up your monsters with a percentage of your exp even if you dont fight with them! It means you dont lose buddy battle festivals just because you choose to use them for farming instead of fighting. i have like a bazillion monster barns all super maxed out size and i have all my monsters doing the majority of my farming work nowadays except if I need to try levelling up seeds or growing a large crop. I respect them a lot cos theyre doing all this hard work so I’m able to take time off and focus on dating people and saving the world, while still making good money and PP! They save me a lot of time juggling the two sides of the game ^_^ Also I started off wanting to try and catch one of every monster in the game, but it started to become impossible to afford the higher level upgrades to get big enough monster barns to hold them all, cos I was having 90% of my fields taken up by growing enough hay to feed them all. So i sadly had to give up on the idea! But by then i’d grown attatched to a lot of them so I was only able to release the last few newest ones I’d got, I still have like forty of them and only ten of them are actually doing anything :P BUT THEYRE TOO CUTE TO SAY GOODBYE!! Oh and now i am still trying to maybe collect all the ghost types, cos theyre sweetie boops! i really love the design of the spirit types with the flamey body and the jack o lantern face. (funny since theres an ACTUAL jack o lantern type ghost that just has a regular smile) Its a bit of a lazy design choice that all of them are flameballs just recoloured to match the elements tho, i mean why not have them be lil tornados or water droplets with faces? Anyway, my main one is a wind elemental named Gizmo after my rotom in pokemon. She was one of The Saviour Trio, whom I love! They were part of an unusual strategy that helped me powerlevel early on. I would run into a dungeon that was way too high level to be completed right now, and throw all my good cookery items at the first monster i see, hoping I could catch it. Then if I succeeded I would use that monster to beat up all the similarly levelled monsters while my low level self was dying in the background, carrying me thru the dungeon til I’d powered up enough to fight alongside it! ^_^ The initial two I started with were Fester the hammer giant and Atlas the beetle, but when I saw the adorable ghosties I had to catch one and call it gizmo! i actually saw that dungeon’s wind variant ghosties before i met the original fire ones in the actual dungeon I was supposed to go to. Another noteable trio were the first three monsters I caught, who’ve been managing my main farm field ever since. Virion the archer orc, Snap the chipsqueak and Florin the flower thingie! Also Iron the bull, who’s been perpetually useful with how he’s like the only damn way to get milk items, seriously :P Why is milk so sparse in this game :P (tho randomly i do like how this world’s equivelant of cows are like if cows and bulls were merged into one creature. genderfluid bovine! maybe theyre like clownfish) There’s also Silver and Kafka, the two mandatory pets that you get during the various sechs dungeons for some reason. I got particularly attatched to Kafka cos I headcanoned that the monsters trapped in that cage were human test subjects used to develop the rune stone technology that ethelberd uses to steal the dragons’s power. It just seemed like that would be the only reason that this fairy monster can talk when no other ones do. So i kinda treat Kafka like he’s my character’s child, even though he never talks again after you add him to your party I like to headcanon he’s still sentient and part of the family. Oh, and I headcanon he’s a boy cos I didnt know until seeing the monster profile after recruiting the character that the green fairies are meant to be female. None of the other monsters get described as only being one gender except the fairies, if I recall correctly? (and the guardian bosses, but thats understandable considering their origins) So yeah, i kinda made him into an oc and I can imagine him having a gijinka form like the guardians after theyre purified? but fairy type monsters already look pretty humanoid and if I made them any more so then they’d just look exactly like amber. So maybe if I draw him as an oc I’d change what kind of monster he is and try drawing a gijinka of that? Maybe merge some of my monsters together and do a gijinka of the wind ghosties or the dead tree thing? SPEAKING OF WHICH I LOVE MY NEWEST TEAM MEMBER russel the tree ghost boss character!! he is so huge and so powerful!!! I love him!! I was so pleasantly surpised to find out I could catch boss monsters!! I think he’s the best one ive got so far, cos the second bosses in each guardian dungeon were kinda ones that didnt have any plot or anything, so i feel more like i can make ocs of them. it was weird how they just came out of nowhere to have ane xcuse for the revisit quests to have a boss battle too. Extra weird cos you can still rematch the guardian bosses once per day anyway. anyway my oc thoughts for russel is that he is Large but very kind and gentle and shy and cries whenever he hurts the smaller peoples. He is a quiet gardener who likes to bake apple pies for people. (”This apple was grown from my flesh!” *sunny smile*) So he’s kinda like a more socially anxious Amber? I was thinking if he got to turn into a human with a tragic past like how the first four bosses did, he would be a big bara love interest guy cos he’s like the largest boss character model. And cos shy kind baras are some of my fave love interests! (I am SO excited to marry benny in Fe Fates whenever i finally get that game!) I was thinking maybe he could have dark skin and have some bright shoulder tattoos that look all flowery like the apples he had as a tree. And maybe he sprouts flowers from his shoulders when he blushes! Or maybe has a flower on the top of his head? But I like the idea of him having very big hair of some sort, to tangeantally resemble a tree. Maybe a handsome afro, or maybe very long very soft flowing rapunzel hair, or maybe very non-bishie scruffy hair that he can never tame? Or maybe he’s bald and has a long beard... Anyway he would be very cute and I think he’d be a fan favourite.