Pokemon Uranium is not a very good game.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Pokemon Uranium is not a very good game.

Ace of Aces: Feb 25, 2017; ZENRYOKU ZENKAI

That problem exists more in the Duel Monsters anime than in the original manga, since the original manga gave each character their own area of expertise: Yugi carries Atem who is responsible for VENGEANCE; Joey and Tristam are the physical characters (but rather than double-dipping, Tristam is an airsoft otaku and so anytime striking something at distance with a projectile comes up he's important); Tea has more empathy than the others and is good at talking to people. They form a group together. The anime eventually gets its act together by promoting Joey to "other main character" status and making it clear that Tea holds Atem's leash, but poor Tristam gets left out to dry.

What I'm getting at is that you're absolutely right but it's a problem of the lazy writing endemic to the genre rather than a requirement of the genre itself. With regard to Pokemon, it's worth pointing out that Misty and Brock originally fulfilled different roles to Ash, being much more experienced trainers who could both explain things to him and seriously bring down the pain when things got busy. ... and then the writing got worse. ORAS and SuMo are both definitely better; SuMo was discussed above, and ORAS (if you're playing as May anyway, idk if there's a personality change if you pick Brendan) makes it clear that, while Wally is your rival and he is working hard offscreen, Brendan isn't really interested in the whole Elite Four thing and he's more interested in just exploring and filling out his Dex - he even quits battling during the rematch at the end of the game when you beat him since he feels he can't match your commitment to battling. It's pretty well-done considering that X/Y in theory had your entire satellite crew with different goals (except Calem/Serena who is your direct rival), but they all decide that they need to be fighting you if they're going to be worth anything. It's especially problematic in Shauna's case, because she's supposed to be directly pursuing Mega Evolution and she pretty much... doesn't, complete with never gaining a Mega Stone (unlike your rival, who has a Mega Absol in the postgame).

tl;dr X/Y's group of friends sucked and they made it a shitload better between then and ORAS and SuMo.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 10:01

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# ? May 13, 2024 23:21

Taciturn Tactician: Jan 27, 2011; The secret to good health is a balanced diet and unstable healing radiation; Lipstick Apathy

I'm not a huge fan of the part in X/Y where you battle all your friends, because while yes, Tierno probably could beat you in a dancing battle, everyone involved knows he's going to lose in a pokemon battle. It just feels like they went "they're your rivals you gotta fight them at some point."

# ? Mar 29, 2017 10:10

SyntheticPolygon: Dec 20, 2013

Ace of Aces posted:

It's especially problematic in Shauna's case, because she's supposed to be directly pursuing Mega Evolution and she pretty much... doesn't, complete with never gaining a Mega Stone (unlike your rival, who has a Mega Absol in the postgame).

I thought Shauna's deal was that she didn't have a big goal like everyone else. She just wanted to travel around with her pals and take some cool photos.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 10:25

girl dick energy: Sep 30, 2009; You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?

The friends thing in X/Y got a little easier to swallow once I recontextualized: You're the rival. You're the Gary Motherfucking Oak to Serena's Ash. You're just a bit less of a dick about it.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 10:33

SyntheticPolygon: Dec 20, 2013

I feel like people say "this time you're the rival" every new pokemon game these days.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 10:55

Taciturn Tactician: Jan 27, 2011; The secret to good health is a balanced diet and unstable healing radiation; Lipstick Apathy

PMush Perfect posted:

The friends thing in X/Y got a little easier to swallow once I recontextualized: You're the rival. You're the Gary Motherfucking Oak to Serena's Ash. You're just a bit less of a dick about it.

Gary doesn't win the league in the anime, and in the games while he beats you to every gym, he also loses to you every time you fight (normally anyway, I think you can maybe lose some of those fights and still continue, I don't remember). In neither is Gary the one having climactic 1v1s with the leader of the evil team. The player character is not the rival because playing a game where all you do is oppose the person who's actually involved in the story until they eventually beat you in a heartwarming character arc wouldn't be a great idea. Usually people like it when you get to play the protagonist.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 11:03

Arcade Rabbit: Nov 11, 2013

SyntheticPolygon posted:

I feel like people say "this time you're the rival" every new pokemon game these days.

They have pretty much as far back as gen 3. You never are, it's never planned that way, people just put a lot of thought into parts of the games that aren't actually there.

My big gripe with XY friends was that they stopped me in what felt like every loving route to talk about something, or battle me, or take me to some dumb haunted house.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 11:10

Jen X: Sep 29, 2014; To bring light to the darkness, whether that darkness be ignorance, injustice, apathy, or stagnation.

Bianca and Cheren were very good

Tierno and his crew of dipshits were awful

they are all better than theo

# ? Mar 29, 2017 11:42

Onmi: Jul 12, 2013; If someone says it one more time I'm having Florina show up as a corpse. I'm not even kidding, I was pissed off with people doing that shit back in 2010, and I'm not dealing with it now in 2016.

SyntheticPolygon posted:

I feel like people say "this time you're the rival" every new pokemon game these days.

They do. Because they're idiots. Their mind is fixated on Green/Blue always being one step ahead in the games. Compounded with their stupid memories as a child of not hitting the Pokemon Center once they hit Cerulean and Lavender and go "OH MY GOD THIS MOTHERFUCKER JUST AMBUSHES YOU AFTER YOU'VE GONE THROUGH HELL!" with none of them wanting to admit they were dumb children who missed the obvious rest points.

I mean, Silver was never classified as being better than you, he was classified as being a dick. And your protagonist is not a dick to anyone around them. It takes them a long time to realize the games have just changed to not be providing you with an antagonistic force, but a supporting force.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 11:47

Orange Fluffy Sheep: Jul 26, 2008; Bad EXP received

Uranium corrects this by making you periodically crush a child's self-esteem, even when he's worried his dad might be dead.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 12:21

PureRok: Mar 27, 2010; Good as new.

You're always the rival. Because real rivalry works both ways.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 12:38

Ace of Aces: Feb 25, 2017; ZENRYOKU ZENKAI

SyntheticPolygon posted:

I thought Shauna's deal was that she didn't have a big goal like everyone else. She just wanted to travel around with her pals and take some cool photos.

Sortakinda but when you get introduced to the concept after your first stop in Santalune when you get a Kanto starter, Shauna's reaction when asked what people are going to do is "Mega Evolution sounds cool~" and she goes to look into it; it's part of why she drags you off to the castle in the town just out of it (not Parfum Palace, the other one). The rival is also interested, but to them it's because they feel they'll set themselves a part as a Trainer by mastering Mega Evolution.

But you're right, she's most interested in it because it sounds cool, rather than having any huge goals in mind. Even when you fight her a second time it's largely because she thinks it would be fun to do since you fought each other at the start of your journey too.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 12:43

Raserys: Aug 22, 2011; IT'S YA BOY

SyntheticPolygon posted:

Edit: I don't count the gen III rival as a friend, because they are the worst rival.

I hope you mean May/Brendan because OR/AS made Wally good

The showdown in the field of roses with the triumphant anime music owns

# ? Mar 29, 2017 12:50

Taciturn Tactician: Jan 27, 2011; The secret to good health is a balanced diet and unstable healing radiation; Lipstick Apathy

PureRok posted:

You're always the rival. Because real rivalry works both ways.

I feel like a lot of Pokemon rivalries are pretty one-sided. Is it even possible to lose those pokedex battles in X/Y? I saw someone winning them on a nuzlocke run which seems pretty telling.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 12:50

Strange Matter: Oct 6, 2009; Ask me about Genocide

Bydoless posted:

How specific are the counters and how much do you need to grind to get them in the first place? Specifically, do you need to catch and grind up specific out-there Pokemon with specific moves and abilities to counter these threats? Because assuming that Omega Emerald is a rom hack of GBA Emerald, TMs are probably still single-use, and you have to grind up Heart Scales to have access to a Move Relearner you may not even have access to for much of the game, thus limiting the amount of moves you could 'store' for constructing a strategies.

Not so specific that I recall, it's more that the game really discourages you from just sticking with a single team the entire time and rather incentivises you to change your lineup to deal with specific threats. For whatever reason Maxi gave me no end of trouble, in large part because he's got an extremely nasty Ninetails with Draught as its ability and Energy Ball to make life unpleasant for most Water, Ground or Rock types. I think I wound up raising a Ludicolo and a Lunatone (of all things) to deal with his team in particular. This is helped that a lot of weaker Pokemon have their stats slightly raised to be a bit more competitive and some of their movesets changed, to the point where my boy Sanjuro the Farfetch'd was with me the entire game (though he still fainted a lot, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of him).

Unless I'm completely misremembering, the ROM was hacked to make TMs infinite use, so that was real nice. Not so much with Heart Scales though.

quote:

Also, is there a nice curve where for example the closer you get to a major boss with a full team of 6 Pokemon the higher the Pokemon-to-opponent ratio is overall?

Yes, it's got that curve. Omega includes Pokemon through Gen...5, I think (whichever one Hydregon is in, since the final encounter has that guy). So most trainer lineups were adjusted to have larger rosters if only to accommodate them all. It's a much more even ratcheting-up than your describing.

I may just have to go play it again, actually. It was a lot of fun.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 13:31

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

What happens in Uranium when you lose a Nuzlocke run outside of the first battle? Do you still keep dead man walking or you just get dumped to the start menu?

# ? Mar 29, 2017 14:21

Tired Moritz: Mar 25, 2012; wish Lowtax would get tired of YOUR POSTS

_{_{(n o i c e)}}

The game crashes.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3810138&pagenumber=30#post470134195

# ? Mar 29, 2017 14:25

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

Tired Moritz posted:

The game crashes.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3810138&pagenumber=30#post470134195

Try again.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 14:27

Tired Moritz: Mar 25, 2012; wish Lowtax would get tired of YOUR POSTS

_{_{(n o i c e)}}

I mean, would it work out the same way? You wake up, all your pokemons are dead and you walk somewhere and the game crashes.

Obviously, if you have some pokemon with you in the computer, it wouldn't be that big of a problem. But I doubt there's a game over screen considering the fact that they didn't even check to see that the grass starter can easily get murdered.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 14:31

Jabor: Jul 16, 2010; #1 Loser at SpaceChem

I think HardDiskD is asking for someone to check what actually happens, rather than speculating about what is probably going to happen.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 14:41

Tired Moritz: Mar 25, 2012; wish Lowtax would get tired of YOUR POSTS

_{_{(n o i c e)}}

I will patiently wait because I'm now curious too.

I silently pray for a edgy game over screen tbh.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 14:45

Bydoless: Feb 25, 2017; Cooperate? Surrender the Forums you call "cooperate?"

Does Pokemon Uranium have Fast-Forward functionality? I'm asking because Pokemon Reborn does have Fast-Forward toggling mapped to a key that attempts to speed up the whole game by 3x, but the engine can't handle it and the actual speed-up varies wildly depending on area, and also it makes the game choppier in heavy load areas.

Of course, those performances issue may be alleviated if I was using anything better than my poo poo laptop, but what can you do.

Bydoless fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Mar 29, 2017

# ? Mar 29, 2017 17:39

Orange Fluffy Sheep: Jul 26, 2008; Bad EXP received

It took me 9 minutes to get ded. It would've been faster but raptorch procced flame body. I'm kinda miffed it's a half-minute slower than Go home and die%.

Yes the "er" faded in then faded out before the "game ov" , which is an impressive technical feat when that screen is a single .png. It then did a hard reset of the application, and it just so happens I replaced PU-intro1.png with the lyrics to skater boi in comic sans.

The music for the game over screen is some doofy jingle somewhere in the sound files and I don't really care.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 17:50

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

Thanks.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 17:55

Bydoless: Feb 25, 2017; Cooperate? Surrender the Forums you call "cooperate?"

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Yes the "er" faded in then faded out before the "game ov" , which is an impressive technical feat when that screen is a single .png.

Why didn't that proc after losing the intro rival fight? I assume it was a scripting issue with fights you could lose without blacking out that override the "Nuzlocke" check, and the developers, being smrt, didn't think to check that edge case.

I'm guessing they used a purely black image to cover the game-over.png at start, which fades out to create the effect, but something went wrong somewhere.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 17:59

Paul.Power: Feb 7, 2009; The three roles of APCs:
Transports.
Supply trucks.
Distractions.

Pokemon Uranium: "something went wrong somewhere"

# ? Mar 29, 2017 18:06

serefin99: Apr 15, 2016; Mikoooon~
Your lovely shrine maiden fox wife, Tamamo no Mae, is here to help!

Paul.Power posted:

Pokemon Uranium: "something went wrong everywhere"

# ? Mar 29, 2017 18:14

Hemingway To Go!: Nov 10, 2008; im stupider then dog shit, i dont give a shit, and i dont give a fuck, and i will never shut the fuck up, and i'll always Respect my enemys.
- ernest hemingway

I have a lot of trouble following the discussion here. Are these pokemon better or worse than Uranium's?

e: actually might be real pokemon far as I can tell, idk

# ? Mar 29, 2017 18:37

theshim: May 1, 2012; You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!

Delicious buttery armor :yum:

# ? Mar 29, 2017 18:40

Space Kablooey: May 6, 2009

Hidden Ability: Drang

# ? Mar 29, 2017 18:43

Kheldarn: Feb 17, 2011

Hidden Ability: Stick Hat.

I want that.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 18:48

loquacius: Oct 21, 2008

the abilities are the best part of that

Stick Hat :allears:

Beak Eye

Rum Power

# ? Mar 29, 2017 18:49

Orange Fluffy Sheep: Jul 26, 2008; Bad EXP received

Darp is OP as gently caress, nerf plz goddamn

# ? Mar 29, 2017 19:07

The Golux: Feb 18, 2017; Internet Cephalopod

Ronch doesn't need any of your fancy abilities, Ronch remembers back in Gen 2 where they didn't have abilities, or more than four colors per sprite, or rotating and scaling animations. Ronch had to save every time its box was changed, and liked it.

EclecticTastes posted:

Huh, yeah, it kinda does, now that you mention it. Or any kid-centric anime or game based on it, really. Yu-Gi-Oh, Medabots, etc., all the friends are just orbiting the protagonist like a fan club. Maybe that's just how the protagonists see them due to rampant narcissism, and in reality they actually have other stuff going on.

I'd disagree with it on the Medabots front. Koji is a real rival and isn't even there that often, the Screws are bullies that pick on Ikki and then get caught up in a lot of the same situations because of it, Arika is a childhood friend and a photojournalist who, once Ikki starts doing cool things, wants to document it, Karin is a literal saint that Ikki has a huge crush on but still isn't there all the time.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 19:24

Cirina: Feb 15, 2013; Operation complete.

Bydoless posted:

Does Pokemon Uranium have Fast-Forward functionality? I'm asking because Pokemon Reborn does have Fast-Forward toggling mapped to a key that attempts to speed up the whole game by 3x, but the engine can't handle it and the actual speed-up varies wildly depending on area, and also it makes the game choppier in heavy load areas.

Of course, those performances issue may be alleviated if I was using anything better than my poo poo laptop, but what can you do.

Having tried the game myself about a year ago I can tell you that it is definitely not because of your laptop, it's because rpgmaker is garbage.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 19:40

LAY-ZX: Nov 10, 2009

Raserys posted:

I hope you mean May/Brendan because OR/AS made Wally good

The showdown in the field of roses with the triumphant anime music owns

His Pokemon have given him the strength and courage to fight. He has to win for their sake. :japan:

ORAS Wally is my favorite rival in the whole series. Little cancer dude turns into an anime protagonist because POKEMON

# ? Mar 29, 2017 19:49

Justice Sloth: Jun 10, 2012; Damn skippy.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Darp is OP as gently caress, nerf plz goddamn

Please tell me you're joking. No Darp? Without Darp, Strangy is just a third-wheel Magic Guard user in a tier that already has Alakazam and Reuniclus.

I mean, what else are you gonna run, Assault Vest Wharmwbra? Give me a break.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 19:53

Quantum Toast: Feb 13, 2012

The Golux posted:

Ronch doesn't need any of your fancy abilities, Ronch remembers back in Gen 2 where they didn't have abilities, or more than four colors per sprite, or rotating and scaling animations. Ronch had to save every time its box was changed, and liked it.

Maybe that is its ability? It forces the game to follow Gen 2 mechanics in its presence.

For god's sake don't use any TMs on it.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 20:03

the holy poopacy: May 16, 2009; hey! check this out; Fun Shoe

Hemingway To Go! posted:

I have a lot of trouble following the discussion here. Are these pokemon better or worse than Uranium's?

e: actually might be real pokemon far as I can tell, idk

Go! Staroptor!

# ? Mar 29, 2017 20:10

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# ? May 13, 2024 23:21

Materant: Jul 22, 2010; see, what you don't understand is he now has

THE MANLIEST MUSTACHE

_{_{_{_{it defies physics}}}}

Rum Power is the best, just get shitfaced for every battle.

# ? Mar 29, 2017 20:22

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Pokemon Uranium is not a very good game.

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