Recently I was watching Ayrei for fan game recommendations and he did a full video on Pokemon Rejuvination. I did agree with some points, but I diagree that it is the best Fan Game. I’d think that title is more deserving elsewhere for me Arcana Force, Solar Eclipse, or Miragea’s Traveller are more deserving I’d pick Ayrei’s own Fan Game, Vanguard over any of the Reborn Trilogy.

Now, why don’t I like the Reborn trilogy. This includs three games Reborn, Rejuvination, and Desolation. The games are actually good, but everything works against the player to me. Storytelling and writing is some of the best I have ever seen in any fan game. The charcters are amazing and I would say that is one of the better reasons to pick these games up. Music is great too and I have no complaints on presentation.

That does not mean these games are flawless while they can be fun I personally don’t like the new mechanics they add. Story and writing are good to an extent except for the begining of Desolation which just reuses the premise from Rejuvination. Being on a cruise ship then the evil team causes the ship to crash or be destroyed and the player is one of few or the only survivor. Next the Terrain mechanic is one of the most annoying things ever added to a game. For every area you traverse a different Terrain will add buffs or debuffs on paper this sounds amazing in practice it is awful. For example being in the volcano in Desolation causes super heated air and a Sunny weather. Both of these effects are identicle powers up fire type moves and lowering water type moves a significant amount so you are dealing with Sunny weather on top of more of a down grade to your power and to make things worse any kind of fire type move will ignite the battlefield and causes eveything not a fire type to take damage every turn so you have to either use a fire type against other fire types or rock and ground types with high hp. Shortly after that part you would think the second gym would be a cakewalk the leader uses flying types and since there are not really any good electric types up to that point, rock is your best bet then you learn the terrain here lowers power and acceracy of rock type moves second it also adds a tailwind to the opponent which means they move first I had spent some time grinding to prepare and despite being 10 levels over I still lost because of this.

I feel like I’d give these games more credit if terrain was optional. The games already let you customize pretty much everything why not Terrain? I know I’m not the ony one who hates that mechanic every time some of the discriptions in other Fan Games mention being inspired by the trilogy someone in the comments basically begs them not to add terrain and while I agree these people need to yell in a different void I don’t disagree with their points. As I said there are good points, some of the best story and writing in any game finds their home here, but that just makes the flaws stand out even more.

Score 7/10 It is still an impressive game and there is a lot to love about them, but there are things that need work