Pokemon Reborn always hits you where you least like it. When you start out into the game, you have to get used to the dark and nefarious atmosphere. Once you’ve done that, you have to get used to the merciless and stubborn balancing of the fights. Once you’ve done that, you have to get used to the level cap and the requirement for a slave army. I somehow managed to do all of this - and yet I'm currently not happy with this popular Pokemon hack.
My last report was a long time ago - I wrote it just before Christmas. This long hiatus certainly has something to do with my full-time job and my persona projects, but more with the fact that my motivation to play Reborn, to play it far enough for another report, continually collapsed and I really, really had to force myself to do so in the end. And why? Not because of the difficulty. It currently hardly gives me sleepless nights - As I will explain below, the combination of a slave army and the Toxic attack is an all-destructive steamroller. No, what Pokemon Reborn has done to me in the last few days and weeks in a sustainable and much more unpleasant way than the balancing could ever do is something that is an absolute No-go in my book:
Bad writing. Really bad writing.
Nerve-wracking-bad, horrifying-infantile, outraging-audacious CallTV-Meme-ItsJustAPrankBro-Writing.
A weakness which I certainly would not have expected after the completely different points of criticisms for Reborn, the characters and the world have so far been so consistent. But I guess everyone gets into a creative crisis. Or a writer's blockade. While most people then decide to take a break or collect new inspiration, the Reborn team has taken the rotten path to stage what is probably the most terrifying, annoying, outrageous and impertinent fetch quest in video game history.
What was the goal of all of this? The 5th Gym Badge. And until I had at least that, I didn't want to deliver another report. Because, and you have to remember that - there are 16 badges and even more gym leaders. If I don't want to have fifty reports at the end, I have to divide Reborn into certain sections. I wasn't aware that the 5th badge here acts as the literal gold at the end of the shit-rainbow. Let me tell you more.
Marrymepls
A late warning: If it has not yet become clear, the following text is FULL of harsh, subjective and in my eyes justified criticism - I write this because I appreciate the exchange with the Reborn community, but in the recent past they have shown that they don’t take criticism of their game all too well. Therefore, if you can’t take a negative cryout, and this is the main part of the article this time, maybe dont continue reading here. Thank you.
What happened to me, what is my current status? I just defeated the (replacement) gym leader for badge five and received the little plastic plug after an odyssey through hell. Before that, I once again salted the soup for Team Meteor - several times - defeated other leaders and freed children from an abusive freak show establishment. I got to know different regions of Reborn and saw new faces - All of that would be okay. Were it not for the nutty reasons and the crackbrained excuse for this trip around the world in a nutshell. Without talking any longer around the point, this time the core of this article are the pro + contra-lists, as these are the most effective way to show the course of my recent thoughts.
Good and bad in Pokemon Reborn, more or less chronological, take a look.
. PRO:
+ I love the whole Assylum quest. Getting some kids out of the clutches of an insane scientist by popping up all the guards using Pokemon fights is a cool idea and the atmosphere was also very charged - successful staging right there.
+ Anna and Shelly are life. Anna and Shelly are love.
+ I liked even more the subsequent course of meeting the Assylum kids under the bridge after the outbreak and fleeing the law together as a group - that could have opened a great questline that would have been completely different from the main games and which could also have been possible to connect with the gym fights. Could have.
+ Shades gym is more than awesome - you only get something like this in Reborn. Everything about it, from the lights, the desolation and abandonment, through the music to the video sequences, is great. I don't understand it yet but I like it. The distorted battle music knows how to please.
+ It is satisfying when Pokémon attacks are used smart outside of fights -> Amalie and Lapras in front of the Meteor factory.
+ I think I really like Amalie as a character and I like that the Meteor boss later tried to use his Pokemon against me personally.
+ The slave army strategy worked - I change my team before pretty much every boss fight, but by having around 20 trained, ready-to-use Pokemon, I can respond to almost anything. They are just lifeless tools to me, but do I care? The last detail of this strategy was advice from the community -> Toxic beats everything. That's right - 70% of the battles I have currently won through Toxic + Switching out + potion-spaming. At first I felt guilty, but after a certain fetch quest I didn't anymore. My friend and Reborn-mentor said that at some point this would not work anymore, but at the moment it does quite well, which is why Reborn is currently not causing me any problems - I took apart lads like Cal the first time I tried.
+ Cal's design. He is what Lancer always wanted to be.
+ The double fights in the volcano are fun because you are cured after every fight and you have a partner.
+ Holy Ho-oh. The twist with Cal wasn't particularly surprising, but it was hard to throw a Pokemon into the lava first and then kill a woman (Deserved!). It's really gettin 'dark in Reborn.
+ Aya is the first Gym Leader since a long time that I dont want to massacre into eight parts and spread her across all regions. She and Hardy are cute together.
+ HURAAAAAAAAAAY, AFTER WEEKS IN REAL-TIME AND INGAME, I HAVE CONQUERED THE FIFTH BADGE. NOW PLEASE !! DO!! NOT!! DIE!! AYA !!
Those were the positive points of my trip. What keeps me going at the moment is actually just the habit - I have arrived in Reborn and have embarked on this challenge, now I just have to pull it through. And I'm excited to see what happens next. The bottom line of this article, however, are the things that drove me nearly to madness, which is why we now devote ourselves to the detailed CONTRA. I'll save the whole fetchquest thing for the end.
CONTRA:
- Why does Heather not release her damn dragon pokemon when she is kidnapped to the Assylum and BURNS DOWN THE WHOLE SHIT ?! Why doesn't a SWAT team storm the Assylum down to free her?
- *sigh* Aaaaand more meteor fight in a factory ... meteors here, meteors there ... you almost feel like a dinosaur ...
- A simple quest log would be lifesaving in this game. I keep forgetting what to do and where to go, and the help dude at the front desk doesn't help.
- I fucking hate puzzles. tried the poke-cage puzzle for five minutes and then googled. Regret nothing apart from the five minutes invested.
- Another meteor admin fight with an overpowered mutantmon.
Wuuu ... variance ...
- The fight went well until the mutant appeared and my entire team was destroyed. Expectable. Anti-poison slave team is in order.
- 70% of the gameplay in Pokemon Reborn is without a lie running from A to B to talk to Person X, then sprinting back to A, taking a detour to C, and stopping by B again. And don't forget A.
- Kiki is a psychopathic bitch which first forces her favorite student + appendage to an extremely long, annoying test before giving her the means to independently SAVE a few ABDUCTED CHILDREN FROM FAMOUS PSYCHOPATHIC TERRORISTS. The writing of this game makes Game Freak look like City Projekt Red.
- Azurione Island is horribly designed and one single agony.
- The music on Azurione is incredibly inappropriate and atmosphere-killing, the very first time in this game. So we have a deserted, overgrown island where we have to save someone, and we get our atmosphere from Rave-Dubstep pulled to 120%, which would have fit in a crackhead club, but certainly not on an island.
- I can't even laugh at Cain anymore, or even like her. The Fetch quest destroyed her. Damn quest.
- Can we talk about the fact that our protagonist is just an insensitive, selfish and sociopathic asshole? Kiki is terminally ill and Victoria almost cries in an attempt to stop us from fighting her. Are we interested in that? No. Why? Because we have no choice. Let's think about it: to include the choice here what is more important to us as the player - Victoria and Kiki or the kidnapped children - would be difficult, profound and morally thrilling. But no, there is nothing like that. Quite apart from the question of whether it would not make more sense for Kiki to simply give us the badge instead of the fight so that we can SAVE KIDNAPPED CHILDREN!!!!!
- Regarding Cals Twist: This is another example of the stupid writing - What does he actually want? Instead of explaining himself and speaking understandable words, he stutters like some drunken idiot and then runs away. Hello TVTropes! And why doesn't his change of mind come two seconds earlier?
- Cal's excuse is ridiculous, he behaved like a complete idiot and now I am supposed to get sympathy for him. No, I do not believe you. Get lost.
- The piece of music from the poisonous desert, as the second piece in the game, is a terrible ordeal to my ears, and for a long time on that. Inappropriately much.
The Fetchquest or: How to stretch your game over three times the norm in an insulent and audacious way
From the Assylum-escaping onwards, the atmosphere, the pacing and the story were at their peak for me - there was now a very narrow narrative that dealt with these escaped children and there was a spirit of optimism. But as I was really expecting, it didn't last long because it got watered down again with unnecessary obstacles. I didn't expect THAT, though.
Please let me briefly summarize what interrupted the flight with the children and what is ultimately necessary in order to be able to free them from their kidnappers in the first place:
We have to go to the abandoned factory to defeat gym leader Shade, so that the electricity can flow again and we are able to open a steel door. But it turns out that Team Meteor is waiting behind that same door to kidnap the kids. No problem, we quickly rush to help, but whoops, Cain gets ahead of us - and accidentally tears a tiny crack in the ground with his Pokemon, the silly one. Well, that's a shame - Because our Dark Souls cadets of characters and their Pokemon can neither jump over this tiny gap, nor fly over it or cover it any other way, they have to move a rock, but for that they need the TM strength. But to get that they have to defeat the fifth gym leader. Well, who cares, Team Meteor will take its time torturing the kids. So, onwards to crossing the lake and beating the gy -... oh, right, first we have to undo the pollution of the water with Amalie and beat a complete Team Meteor factory. In addition to the usual admin mutant battles. Okay, the kids are probably not well by now, now it has to go quick - Amalia gives us her boat and we go to the next gym. The leader will certainly understand the children's precarious situation, right? WRONG. Rule is rule - if we want to get the only means of rescuing the kidnapped victims of terrorists known nationwide, the badge has to be won. But gym leader Kiki shows mercy in her morbid cold-willedness and her blind (Haha!) Stubbornness - Instead of fighting her, we are supposed climb a volcano to defeat her student Cal and win the badge. Huiuiui, I hope the kids are fine, it takes longer than expected ... when we are done with that, it turns out - the old hag lied in our faces ice cold. No badge for us, we have to defeat her first after all. Naughty. But you know how it is, you do it for the children, who hopefully have an exorbitant resistance to torture. Kiki is defeated, now we finally get the badge, right? Haha, of course not. Dramaqueen and Quirky Goth Cain managed to get kidnapped by Team Meteor - on a remote island. Of course we have to save her first, nothing can do. Oh boy, does any of those kids still live? No matter, lets get to the boat, be a man and -... damn, forced Cut-trees are set up again, so back to the Pokecenter and the ™-slave picked up, we have no time pressure, haha! We fight our way through the little fun jungle island and find our favorite sidekick. So, let's get our badge a-OH COME ON! We find out that Team Meteor wants to destroy Kiki's Academy, and of course we want to stop them because we (have to) think that's terrible. We could have stopped Taka on the island beforehand, but did we? NO! We let him go. WHY? Because otherwise we wouldn't have another filler quest! Back to the beach, and climbed the exact same volcano as before - only this time with funny meteor fights and to top it off, three times you can guess? Well? Weeell? Cooooooorreeeeeeeeect - A meteor admin fight with a nice mutant. Oh, what happened to the kidnapped kids? Well no matter. We stop team Meteor and would be ready to accept our badge... if it weren't for the small, unpleasant detail that gym leader Kiki is kicking the bucket. Oh well, that is sad but it doesn't have to bother us, we have already defeated her and there are countless witnesses for it. I beg your pardon? It does not matter? Everything invalid? We have to defeat the replacement gym leader first? Oohff ... that's stupid. And makes no sense. But what do you want to do, don't you? Back by ship to Reborn City and to the gate into the garbage desert. But of course we only get there after Cain instructs us to do a little forced fight. Oh, that's how you show gratitude. <3 Once we have cleared the waste of oxygen out of the way, we can go into a confusing, built-up and labyrinthesque desert area, at the end of which the fifth replacement gym leader awaits us. May we fight her right away? Don't be silly! First of all, Number 1 candidate for premature death from testicular cancer Fern, who certainly hasn't even used his final form, needs to be defeated. THEN we can (again) fight a fifth gym leader and THEN we get the fifth badge and the means to leave Cain's small crack behind and save the children who have been kidnapped for at least days and which are probably, after endless torture sessions, sent to all countries of the world in multiple parts.
Pokemon Reborn - where everything has its purpose.
Hui, that was a long text wall. But the fetch quest was longer, that much is certain. My main problems with this whole thing are few:
1. Every single section of it is completely stupid, makes no sense and leaves everyone involved look bad. The tiny earth crack, an insurmountable obstacle. Disgusting witch Kiki, which doesn't give a damn about the kids. The completely brain-burned gym leader system, which negates gym leader battles won against logic if the leader dies - so if I want to manipulate a competitor, I just have to kill a gym ladder before he can give him the badge. Whoops, you can try again! And lets not forget Cain got destroyed completely through this quest.
2. All these intermediate steps and events and places were not bad in themselves - only the context destroyed them. I would have liked to have done all of this, but not with this incredibly drawn-out motivation to get a badge for a TM for a stone. It could have been so easy to write all of that so much better - But hey, it was Friday evening and no one in the office felt like it, so ...
3. Some of these steps are just obvious, non-content fillers that contribute nothing to the story or the world.
Azurione island.
Noooo~ Really?!
I lol'd.
GAME FREAK is often smiled at for its stories and dialogues. Well, even the worst lows and most shameless goosebumps dialogues of the official Pokemon games were a few light years better than anything in this fetch quest. As a player, I felt like I was almost never before, blatantly and maliciously screwed and trolled by the developer like this. Never before have I been forced to do such a terrifying and nerve-wracking fetch quest that is ridiculous and (hopefully) self-ironic. And my only consolation is that my reborn mentor said something like that won't come again. I really hope so - I was more than once about to abort the game. Im.fucking.possible. And if any particularly committed Reborn fan feels like not accepting this as a fetch quest - Yer 'boy TVTropes sees it differently. (Section Fetchquest)
I take a deep breath. I now have five badges and (hopefully, hopefully) can save these children. But do I still want that? I have been playing Pokemon Reborn now since November, my progress is not too bright and with this fetch quest the balance of things I like about Reborn and those that represent an annoyance to take is tipped considerably in the second direction. That can and will change again, but there are also other good Pokemon fan games out there, some of them already on my PC. I have turned my back on them as long as I play Reborn. Maybe it's time to go double-track and turn my back on Reborn. After only four of sixteen badges, mind you. I'm not sure. We'll see what the next one or two hours of gameplays brings to Reborn.
Here are neutral, noteworthy points:
Neutral:
+ - Ames PC in the Assylum gives me tadvice on how to fight, and instead of telling her that
a professor she knows is a crappy, crazy child abuser and kidnapper, I accept it gratefully.
Ame - The B stands for brainless.
a professor she knows is a crappy, crazy child abuser and kidnapper, I accept it gratefully.
Ame - The B stands for brainless.
+ - Every student on the ash beach tells me how relevant and in-depth Kiki's lessons are ->
In her very first lesson, Kiki talks before my eyes about metaphysical bullshit and irrelevant
calendar slogans.
In her very first lesson, Kiki talks before my eyes about metaphysical bullshit and irrelevant
calendar slogans.
Finally, the Fight section -> Videos of the most important fights, if you care about that.
(Since I have to upload them for the translation again, please check them on the german article right here in the meantime. Thank you.)
Interim
This fetch quest made me very, very angry. It frustrated me and thats clearly visible in this long article. But in contrast to my mostly pointless, emotional rageposts in the Rebornreddit, all of this is well thought out, based on arguments and my opinion. I hope that the members of the Reborn community can accept and forgive this. Sure there are many other opinions on this quest line - but this article is about mine.
Thank you. PS: I will probably not play the update version
18.2 because the Gym Leader-AI is supposed to be even
more intriguing - no thanks. But it was very amusing to read
that you can now forfeit trainer matches. The developers may
deny it until the last day and beyond, but I bet I know who has
anything to do with it. Honestly - nice to be able to achieve
something positive. In this sense - We’ll read us. Probably.
18.2 because the Gym Leader-AI is supposed to be even
more intriguing - no thanks. But it was very amusing to read
that you can now forfeit trainer matches. The developers may
deny it until the last day and beyond, but I bet I know who has
anything to do with it. Honestly - nice to be able to achieve
something positive. In this sense - We’ll read us. Probably.
- Yoraiko
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