Missy's Game Shelf

Pokemon Day Updates Thoughts

The World Championships is now taking place in Yokohama, Japan. Where competions across the TCG, Game, and apps among others. I’m not really one to care for the competitive so this announcement only would make me excited if we saw some strange or new strategies introduced. Kind of like how one of the previous world Champions brought a Pachirisu a relatively throw away Pokemon and still somehow won.

TCG Classic Announcement

I find this to be the most disappointing they already had a set of cards that were using the old Base one deck for the 25^th anniversary. If I could I’d say they should have a new deck or cards based on Base set 2 or Jungle. This doesn’t seem new it just advertises stuff already on the market.

Netflix and Pokemon Concirge

I suppose this is only somewhat of a shock after Netflix got the rights. I am a bit scared what they are going to do. Television based on games hasn’t been great so far. It uses stop motion and seems to be telling some story in the Pokemon universe. So this show will only focus on lore that is already established or branch out to do something different. Though the focus on a resort is strange to me Pokemon is at its core an adventure game so what adventures are at a resort for Pokemon especially when we already have Pokemon Café Remix.

Games

Zacian is joining unite still no real reason to play that so my thoughts are I don’t care so much. Café remix got a Paldea update Sprigato, Fecocco, and Quaxly can join your café. Once again do not care remix was fun for five minutes so admittedly I played it longer than unite. Galar Trainers and events coming to Masters. Definitely the one I played the most I like seeing all the Trainers in one place and find out what happened to them. Just why so late I am aware that Masters does have content geared towards Galar, but I kind of just want them to finish the main story. Pokemon Sleep I’ve seen some useless apps but really? Go got an accessory and has functionality with Scarlet and Violet.

Lastly, Scarlet and Violet got two new Pokemon based on Suicune and Virizion. Wild Mane and Iron Thorns respectfully one clearly an ancient form of Suicune and the other a future form of Virizion are available in raids. A DLC pack The Treasures of Area Zero while not what I expected I will play both packs when they release later this year. I was only half wrong.

Sources:

The Official Pokémon YouTube channel. “Pokemon Presents|2.27.2023”, https://www.youtube.com/, Pokemon, February, 27, 2023, video length 25:46, https://www.youtube.com/@pokemon.

Pokemon Day Hopes and Predictions

For those who don’t know the 28^th of February is when Pokemon sends out updates, news on games both coming out and current, and new patches to bugs. I thought it would be nice to list what I am hoping to see.

DLC PACK FOR SCARLET AND VIOLET

Scarlet and Violet are relatively boring and lore wise not very interesting. The same can be said for Sword and Shield, but I have to admit the packs for those two made the game better. I think the packs should be focusing on time travel or different points in Pokemon’s lore. Maybe seeing the ancient past or distant future, or characters from past games, and mostly focus on either a new place or the origins of Pokemon. Possibly a launch of Pokemon Home update for these games.

A New Legends Game or Other Spinoff

While Legends is a main series game due to lore or having a Pokedex I won’t say I’m not hoping for a new Legends game. I think a focus on the Johto of Kanto regions might be fun.

A new mystery dungeon the only mystery dungeon game on switch is a remake. I think we should get a new game in the series. Or even if there is a remake of explorers then that would at least fit with the themes of multiple universes and time Scarlet and Violet were going for.

Other

News on events and raids for mobile titles. I think there will be more to do in Go, Masters, and Unite so far all we’ve seen in any of those games is up till Gen 8. I think they are going to announce Pokemon and characters from Scarlet and Violet.

I’m going to say this I have yet to play any Sonic game since mania and when it comes to 3D sonic I have only played Heroes and Unleashed. So I am probably the last to go to about Sonic. I saw the gameplay trailor for this and immediately felt something was wrong with Sonics movement, but regardless I tried to keep an open mind. Sonic games at their core are momentum based platformers. The gameplay at best I could run around, but with little control it constantly felt like I was steering sonic over having full control over him he kind of just slides all over the place while I try to avoid spikes. At worst I was just sitting holding the Boost button. I can at least praise the writing here someone tried to make this game marginally more interesting. The biggest thing is the open world. Calling it open would be disappointing at best. It is open with challenges and platforming everywhere, but more or less it is just one big stage connecting to other stages the only reward for doing these are rings and the returning red rings. I didn’t bother to collect all of them as that seemed pointless even with any kind of secret ending. I was already collecting Memory hearts before the game told me what they were. I also only played for a few hours as at that point I felt I had enough to at least do a first impressions review. If you can’t hook a player within 5 hours with gameplay and plot then there isn’t a point to keep playing. It’s odd Sonic Forces was bad because it lasts 4 hours at most here it took me just as long to make an opinion. Was what I played good? No. Was anything about this game good? Maybe the plot but I didn’t play enough to actually get that far into it so it wasn’t considered much for this review. I tried to like this game after the many Sonic related disasters and probably should have given up before 5 hours, but the more I played the worse it got. Dying in this game doesn’t just mean lost progress I had to figure out where I was now for most open world games this is as simple as opening a map or checking a mini map, but they somehow messed this up as you travel the map is created while a unique idea it is really easy to get lost when your map can literally show near nothing. Another thing is it is really easy to get lost after death as you respawn on some random place on the map. Half my deaths took me to areas I never saw or noticed so how is an autosave there?

Score 2/10

Guardian Tales (Switch Port)

Guardian Tales is an incredibly fun game, but with flaws. Widely accepted as a mobile game with more effort than usual as well as free, but with microtransactions it can be easily written off as Pay to Win, but alternatively you can reset your account any time so long as you aren’t too far things should be fine. With just learning the basics and what you need to know then starting a new game should help.

Gameplay

It is an RPG so leveling up and exp are the main mechanic. Each companion has a type and different teams can have advantages in different areas and while you can get more companions these can cost gems or tickets. After Awakening specific skills you can evolve your heroes and use Chain Skills to do combination attacks. The game has a consistent difficulty curve until you hit world 7. Even if you do end up using gems to continue. At that point you have Nightmare mode for new resources rather than difficulty. What I also like about the nightmare levels is that these levels take place after the events of the quests and the main story. The layout is the same, but both the monsters and main goal of the level changed. For example the tutorial level Kanterbury Forest has the goal of locating the princess, meeting the first members of your party, the Guardian Wolf, Innkeeper Loraine, Red hood Elvira and Vampire Karina, and finally unlocking the town simulator. The nightmare level has the goal of figuring out the monsters hiding in the forest, but while you do so several characters from the quests in the normal mode mention things that happened in that world. One character states the disappearance of a brutal Guardian Wolf that lives in the forest, another is looking for the Red Hood, but fails and instead mistakes someone else for her. It’s small, but I like the change of instead of normal levels just harder we actually see people reacting to the changes that happened during the normal playthrough. Much like other RPGs there are different classes for different characters. Tanks do damage and can take a lot of hits the tradeoff is there is not a lot of tanks available to the player unless you use summons, Warrior does a large amount of physical damage guickly, Ranged are good at bows/ riffles and magic with limited ammo but great distance and elemental damage, and Support heals the player.

I liked this game unfortunately at world 7 the game quickly devolves into how many gems do you have and are you willing to spend any throwing away the good gameplay, fleshing out characters, and puzzles for money. For boss rushes and repitious dungeons fortunately World 8 feels better with a bigger focus on puzzles I enjoyed what I played to that point so it really is your choice. The game is free so it doesn’t hurt to at least try.

Score: 7/10

Can a person who has never used this service write a review on it? I’ve never used Stadia simply because of the requirement to always be online at the time of its release my connection was not ideal for the system. This led me to think that during extended play if my internet cut out then I would lose hours of playtime. While this could or could not be true multiple people said that Stadia actually came with gameplay lag and delay input. Then I forgot the service existed entirely after awhile. Google also didn’t advertise it as much in coming years. This was only one reason I had no faith in the platform word of mouth told me I’d never want it. Google has a tendency to release things and want instant profits from it. With a lack of new titles and any games on it having released months, some years, prior to the Stadia actually coming out meaning most already owned a version of it meant nothing interesting on their store and library. With this in mind, it was easy to tell that Google had no interest in gaming or releasing anything of substance. Games can take years to create so the fact Google would attempt it when they shut down items and services after only a short time also told me this wouldn’t last long. What even more baffles me is an internet service like Stadia as it is more advertised as a Netflix for gaming, they failed to capitalize on a pandemic when everyone was reliant on the internet for entertainment. Among Us, Fall Guys, and even services like Playstation Now and XBOX Game Pass are all things that really took off in 2020. Yet Stadia still wasn’t able to get a foothold on the market. As of January 18 2023 Stadia shut down and several games supported by the platform along with it. I was originally planning on writing about high points of this console, but I realized that I was basically reporting on a consoles brief life, death, then the final nail in the coffin.

Score: Is it even possible to score something I never used or had a bias about from the start? 0/10

Harvestella

Harvestella is a game that I have mixed feelings toward. It is a real-time RPG and farm simulator. Similar to Rune Factory though I do enjoy this game more than the disappointing Rune Factory 5. It has a few things different and some things the same.

Gameplay

The farming is how you can get healing items as cooking and making juice is the only way to get stamina and health. You also need to take care of animals so they can not only give you eggs and milk but the more you do the higher quality and higher bonus. Crafting materials are found in dungeons and used for improving weapons and tools for making cheese, juice, animal feed, flour, among other things most of which you can buy, but you save money by doing it yourself.

Combat is confusing until you get used to it. You level up when you sleep and all your stats get a small boost. As time goes on easier enemies won’t give any experience. There are also your companion bonuses depending on who is in your party and how much you helped them you get stat boosts. As for weapons you can change any weapon at the checkpoints in each town and dungeon and some are faster than others, but do less damage. Weapons are under a job system as all weapons have a skill tree.

Plot

The plot starts with the player waking up in a town with amnesia. After a short time they are given a home and farm. They are then told that the Seaslight, an important resource to each area is acting strange. So you investigate and eventually learn that in order to save everyone you need to stop Quietus, a strange dust that comes between seasons and causes illness and eventual death with no known cure otherwise it worsens and kills everyone

Conclusion

I enjoyed this game as frustrating as some mechanics are such as the hunger mechanic leaving me with no way to heal multiple times. It feels like a game with a good balance between plot and gameplay. Harvestella does have a problem with lengthy dungeons being a bit to long, but otherwise it was fun. There are flaws but, this is to be expected as this is a new IP not something established so if a sequel ever comes out I hope they learn from mistakes not create more.

Score: 9/10

Nexomon Extinction is the sequel to the ios and steam game called Nexomon. It is fully playable without knowing the story of the original though I did go back to play the first game after completing the sequel and its release on console.

Gameplay is a Creature Capture and taming rpg similar if not copying Pokemons system. There are things about this game different from Pokemons system. First the capture of creatures utilizes a percentage system you can use food, status effects, and the type of trap to increase your chances and open that menu anytime to check your chances. Nexomon arguably does it better separating special traps by type rather than Pokemon’s being only good for specific situations or better chances for a limited amount of types, the only exception is the normal and golden traps. Golden traps are the same as a master ball with a 100% catch rate and you get multiples rather than just one they are given to you by doing quests and there is only a certain number. Normal Traps can be bought similar to the other traps.

There is a crafting system kind of you find ores and stones with different names and depending on which one you use can craft Cores with different effects to boost stats higher level cores require more materials. The Special Traps can be crafted as well some even require it  if you have the shards. The Shards are also used often for side quests and can be sold.

There is also the fact most of the world is open from the start it is open world with story areas blocked until later. Depending on quests done the Nexomon in the wild will change level and some even evolve so if you want to explore different areas other than story ones you don’t have to worry about being under leveled to the wild ones in later areas. Grinding levels is very unessasary thanks to the cores granting shared exp. The game also has cores that grant more exp.

Combat is largely turn based though you will need a balance between speed and power. While the creature does have stats of its own for that you really only need to rely on attack, HP, and Defence. As weaker attacks also don’t deplete a stamina meter as much causing you to lose a turn as unlike Pokemon and more similar to Digimon the moment that drains you have to either wait a turn or switch to a different creature. This makes the battles seem to drag on as super effective hits are not guaranteed to knockout anything.

I find the plot and characters the most enjoyable part of this game. The story is much darker than Pokemon with a stronger emphasis on the plot. The game takes place hundreds of years after the first and it starts off saying that the world is dying due to the events of the last game. It revolves around the war between monsters and you working for a guild. Then you are free to explore the world.

The game does a lot to change the various systems, but a lot of that is either clunky and hard to understand or needs work to be truly different. I enjoyed this game as an alternative to Pokemon.

Score 8/10

There are some problems with this game and while there are some bugs there was nothing major in my playthrough. I only encountered visual bugs and nothing game breaking. I didn’t hate this game, but also didn’t like it. I find it as a game with some potential yet not reaching any of it.

Gameplay

Pokemon Scarlett is a open world turn based RPG. Honestly, this neither helps nor hurts this game as systems are pretty much the same as older Pokemon. You now have to talk to Trainers to have a battle and while this is better than simply walking around some or mandatory battles there was very little experience given to the point you may as well just use wild Pokemon. The only real use is if your party is low on health you can at least avoid fighting and don’t even have to if you don’t want to the only reward is someone will give you a TM at the Pokemon Center.

Another problem this game has is unlike Legends Arceous where higher level areas were cut off until the game says so you can walk straight to higher level and immediately lose to something 20 levels higher than you this is because the game has a set order if you ask Nurse Joy about what you should do she sends you to the next area you have levels for. Unfortunately, more often than not you will end up losing a few battles simply because one area is closer to you than another. I feel like this problem could be fixed if areas were labelled with a recommended level on the destination so people know where to go with minimal grinding.

Another issue I have is open world tends to feel repetitive or empty without much to explore. Legends Arceus avoided this issue by making the challenges specific to areas and having an at least interesting plot to go with it as well as multiple different maps. Here it feels like someone threw the challenges at a single empty map and hoped for the best. I hate to say that something new to Pokemon is one of the worst things about it doesn’t feel as fleshed out of even one area in Legends so feels like the world is open just to say its open.

Plot

The revolves around three paths that eventually intertwine with you starting as a student enrolled in a school. The Victory Road is the standard for Pokemon as it is centered on collecting Gym Badges and fighting the Champion. Starfall Street is focused on fighting Team Star and helping them not get expelled. Finally, Path of Legends where you fight a giant Pokemon with enhanced stats twice each. All paths intertwine at the last chapter of the game. The paths each make different rewards. Victory Road makes traded Pokemon listen to you and the amount of badges increasing ability to catch Pokemon, Path of Legends lets you unlock abilities for Karidon and Miridan allowing you to travel to new places, and Starfall Street unlocks TMs for crafting and materials as well as League Points which is just another currency alongside regular currency. I found that none of the TMs unlockable were actually useful and the TMs found on the ground either containing better moves or weren’t a pain to unlock due to lack of materials.

Conclusion

This is a game with a lot of potential, but fails to actually reach that. Interesting concepts and ideas are shown, but never go anywhere. This forces the game to just be another open game with nothing to do and nowhere to go the lack of a proper post game is very evident. The post game just has Gym Leader battles and replacing the elite four battles with a tournament of random trainers in a game. Pokemon Sun, Moon, and the Ultra games already did the random trainer for the champion and Pokemon Sword and Sheild already had the mechanic of battles in a style similar to this. Finally Pokemon Arceus already had an enjoyable open world. Three main line Pokemon Games already exist that are better than this. What is lacking now is anything new or different from other games in the series it has a core idea and never explores that idea.

Grade: 4/10

Monster Crown (Switch Review)

Monster Crown is a rpg that is honestly difficult to understand the mechanics at first. The game also isn’t very stable as it crashed multiple times. Not much is explained well to the player and many systems take time to learn. While the Gameboy Color graphics are nice a Switch should be able to run this game.

The rpg elements are similar to other creature capture and taming, but done somehow weirder than most. Several monsters don’t learn new or stronger moves as they level and the breeding mechanic to get better stats or monsters means a lot of grinding. While you level up quickly slow progress makes you feel consistently under leveled and any grinding is useless the amount of crashes loses that progress and you need to start over again. While most bosses can be captured it requires you to over level and get monsters to half health this makes it an almost guarnteed capture. There is also the Synergy mechanic defending or switching monsters can increase power of moves or change their type. Finally level can be stalled unless you defeat certain NPC’s good luck finding them and sometimes they won’t fight you unless you do something first sometimes it is straightforward other times it can be find another NPC in another town despite them saying in the nearby area.

Plot is very predictable thus not interesting darker than Pokemon. It revolves around fighting a person trying to destroy the world through the use of powerful monsters. So you go on a quest to find them first.

While I did enjoy the darker story and difficulty not only was the type chart harder to follow and amount of content was good with a lot of post game content. The amount you miss too due to lack of direction and having to stay on a certain path or risk another crash is sad because it is honestly a game with a lot of potential and in my opinion has the time to be great as the developers are actively patching out several problems and is more stable.

I believe I played this game at the wrong time playing at launch over prior to announced patches that could fix many of the issues discussed. I probably would have judged it more fairly if I did play it later. I plan to review it after they finish patching and trying to fix this game. I know this is also on Steam and don’t know if that version is better or more stable, but if you want an alternative to Pokemon then I would recommend it just wait till it is fully patched.

Score 3/10

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