I finally managed to beat this titan of a game, postgame and all. And I gotta say? This is hands down one of the best Pokémon games I have ever played PERIOD. And this is coming from someone who thought the Gen V sequels were peak. Yeah, the flair does say “Rant”, but this is more so of a general rant than purely negative. But don’t worry, I will get into to some of… that. For now, the elephant in the room. This tierlist. I figured if I was going to talk about my time with this game, a tierlist about who I liked and disliked would help nicely. But for the sake of not making this longer than it probably will be, I'll only list the more notable ones.
• Characters
First up, Eclipse and Aster: For pretty minor characters, these two honestly reached out to me the most. Especially Eclipse. Not only can I sympathize with her reasoning behind literally everything, but it makes it all the more heartbreaking when she gets attacked and you just see Aster defeated over all of it. No joke, that scene genuinely messed me up. And it made it even worse when her father fell into a depressive state. Besides, on a more positive note, Eclipse and Aster's relationship as partners is just fun and heartwarming. They did not need to go this hard for what were otherwise just your run of the mill evil team admins, and yet they somehow became my favourites. On the opposite end…!
Sirius (And his Chandelure): Yeah, if Eclipse and Aster are my favourites, it should be no surprise that I absolutely LOATHE this wannabe edgelord. And I think that can be said for everyone. This guy… really sucks. There is that one moment where he almost gets blown up which was comical, but other than that, not even pre-postgame Lin was that bad in the edgy department. Bro genuinely tried to squeeze out one last remark while burning in lava. And honestly? He’s actually managed to make me hate Chandelure now purely because of what happened with Eclipse. Just for the record, I thought Chandelure was pretty cool in design and lore, but now it appears that lore is what makes me hate it now. Onto a more… odd topic…
Cain: I want to start off by saying I don’t hate him. Not at all. He’s a really good character. The only reason why he’s so low is… well, I just don’t like his design. To be fair, I'm not really a huge fan of makeup, and I'm definitely not a huge fan of the goth design. I will give him credit in that it works exceptionally well for a former Poison-Type Gym Leader, so he does get that. Yeah, nothing much for it. He’s a good guy.
Fern: I'll admit, this list was made before the Mewtwo stuff. But now? I like to imagine his placement is the version of him before becoming a better person. And man, if you like Silver, you will love Fern. He’s literally Silver tenfold. A snotty rival who only cares about surpassing you, only to grow a conscience and try to be a better person towards the end. He’s a really good character and they do an exceptional job at making you hate him. So much so, I almost STILL didn’t forgive him for all the bullshit he put me through even AFTER he saved me.
And finally, Terra and Postgame Lin: They’re both very fun. I like a good character who just does what they want because it’s fun and these two are both textbook definitions of it. At first, I was a little annoyed at Terra's shenanigans, but I did soon learn to just adapt to it and enjoy the chaos. When you learn to accept it, she becomes way more fun. And postgame Lin… she’s also fun. I can see why Terra sees her as a sister. They’re very alike. I think Lin just needed friends to be around.
• Tangents
Now that the characters are out of the way, time to get into… the tangent-y parts. Both in this game and out of this game.
Now, I’m well aware of how hard this game is. Even Red shudders at maxed EV Arceus. But there were a few times where luck was required. Especially for a *certain Elite Four duo…* But even then, despite my moments of… totally zero anger issues… I did enjoy this game. The same… cannot be said for the puzzles. Yeah, a lot of these puzzles were so not fun to try and solve, I did end up skipping most of them with that password. Now, don’t worry, I did not skip the WTC. And when I was starting to figure it out, that section actually ended up being pretty fun. But sadly, a lot of puzzles in this game just seem so confusing or complicated to the point where I had to have a guide open just so I could proceed if I COULDN'T skip a puzzle that was giving me a hard time. I also kind of wish almost every area didn’t have some convoluted puzzle that I had to get through just to get by? Now, I don’t think every puzzle was bad, but I also think most of them weren’t great and could’ve been handled better.
As for the outside parts of this game, I've heard some people say this game is overly edgy and it’s like… yeah, it’s definitely darker than even Pokémon Insurgence, but it’s definitely not that bad. I mean, the worst offenders are, who, Sirius and Pre-Postgame Lin? And even then, Lin does get more fun in said postgame, so she doesn’t technically even count?? Besides, I don’t think a dark story needs to be stigmatized as “Oh, they’re just being edgy for the sake of being edgy!” I mean, that just tells me that you didn’t pay attention to the story one bit if that’s your takeaway, because that’s a wild statement to be making. It’s fine if it’s not for you, but don’t be surprised that the game is dark when the first lines of dialogue is literally warning you about how much of a dump the city is, soon followed by a train bombing. I also saw this one post online about how the game is bloated??? I mean, yeah, it’s a long game. It took me, what, almost a week to finish it? But I don’t think it’s that bad. Johto is only two gym badges short of Reborn and if you think this game, in which most side quests are optional by the way, is bloated, you would fall over at the sight of Skyrim or Fallout 4.
• Closing Thoughts
Anyway, this has gone on long enough, so I guess the main takeaway is: This is a really good, really hard and sometimes frustrating, Pokémon fangame, and I think it’s going to be awhile before another Pokémon game in general knocks this off its proverbial throne. Oh yeah, and the OST? Absolutely peak. GlitchCity, as well as the other artists, all made absolute bangers, even if they weren’t directly tied to this project. My favourites are definitely Pace (Johto Legendary Beast Remix v.II by GlitchCity), the Rival Theme (Iris Remix by GlitchCity), and VS Trainer 2. (Emerald Frontier Brain Remix by GlitchCity. They did not need to choose a theme that hard for a trainer battle.) 10 years in the making, and boy does the effort show. Congrats to the dev team for constructing a masterpiece.