Let's Play Pokemon Reborn: This Trainwreck has no brakes my friend!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play Pokemon Reborn: This Trainwreck has no brakes my friend!

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Onmi posted:

You think a game that lets you be gender neutral that features a long scene in a later episode where one high ranking character talks all about pronouns in a 100% serious manner is going to use "LOLGAY" as an insult?

Because Uranium doesn't allow you to be gender-neutral and then have a gay Gym Leader whose entire schtick is "LOL MAN WEARING A SKIRT".

# ¿ May 30, 2017 03:57

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:47

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Tired Moritz posted:

actually, it did. Did you forgot our dear friend PUSSYMASHER

I'm sorry, I forgot my BBCode there. Well, I'm too lazy to go edit it in, but you can just mentally add [sarcasm] tags to my post, right?

Gonna throw my vote in with bad fanfiction references to go with this bad fangame, but I want a Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirtle.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 21:29

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Yeah, it's the name more than the concept that bugs me. It would be like if Pokemon Green was set in the Green region and the starting (and only) town was Green City. That's more what makes the game look lazy. Persona games get away with setting the game in and around one town, as do Harvest Moon/Rune Factory games; they just flesh out the town and its environs enough to make it enjoyable. Reborn... doesn't seem like it had that much effort or thought put into it.

# ¿ May 30, 2017 23:02

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

General Maximus posted:

Just a note about the saving when you switch boxes thing - it actually wasn't a full save. How do I know that? Because I annoyed the hell out of my brother at one point by overwriting only some of his game with a box switch. (Before I got my own gameboy he'd let me play his but only if I started a new game and didn't save it.) It overwrote all the box and I think party pokemon, but nothing else was altered so he ended up with my low level pokemon but much further on in the game. From a certain standpoint I can kind of see the logic, why save things you don't need to when just switching boxes. But at the same time the game explicitly informs you it's saving the game, so you'd think it'd actually save the game. I'm more impressed that the half save thing somehow still results in a functioning game you can continue playing if you overwrite one save file with half of another.

Well, it's probably just overwriting the Pokemon in party/in box section of the save file, and not touching anything else. Probably doesn't even touch the Pokedex seen/caught entries.

Also, it's a miracle that Gen 1 runs when you put it into your Game Boy anyways, so it running on a Frankenstein save file isn't that impressive. :P

# ¿ Jun 1, 2017 23:11

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

It would also depend upon how efficiently the safeguards were programmed.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2017 22:15

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

hopeandjoy posted:

Honestly, there were so many 80s and 90s RPGs with things like stats that didn't do anything and busted actions that I'm not shocked some checks like this for Gen I dwell through the cracks. A lot of early JRPGs are pretty glitchy.

A lot of games end up really glitchy. The good ones end up with glitches that (mostly) do fun things, like Missingno or the trick in Wild ARMs that allowed you to underflow item quantities and get a million stat-boosting apples or bullet clips or whatever. The bad ones end up crashing every five minutes and forcing you to save in a different slot each time because this time might be the one that eats your save. It's all about the quality of the glitch, not the quantity of glitches.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2017 10:37

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Well, there's also "everything is a balls-to-the-wall desperate fight for survival that you have to counter by any means necessary" and then there's "the deck is constantly stacked against you and you have no options". Shin Megami Tensei is basically Dark Souls difficulty applied to Pokemon*, and it does work. It works largely because while the enemies are tough you're given the tools to overcome them. Matador in Nocturne has a weakness you're allowed to exploit, and you can counter Red Capote with Sukukaja. Minotaur in SMT IV hits like a truck, but deals mainly Physical damage, so if you go in with a Phys-resistant demon or two, you take a bunch of the bite out of him. Enemies in later dungeons may spam high-accuracy instant-death skills, but by that time you can nullify or reflect both of the elements they use to do so. Reborn seems to be going the path of denying you options, and that's never good. An actual SMT (or DS) difficulty Pokemon game might have a Gym Leader fight where you're at the disadvantage like the fight with Julia, but you'd be able to find Ground and Ghost type Pokemon to counter that disadvantage. I'd imagine that if any of the Reborn devs are reading this LP, they'd say, "Oh crap, we left in Pokemon with Lightning Rod, let's axe those guys so they can't ignore our intended slog". Either that or Lightning Rod is the intended way to combat that Gym, and they removed the Ground and Ghost types to keep players from wandering off their specifically marked path. I don't know how you get Hidden Abilities without cheating in this game, but relying on that gamble seems to be going down a dark road.

*Disclaimer: I've never personally played DS, nor have I seen much of it played; I'm just going off what I've heard from others, including friends who have played and beaten the games.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2017 17:18

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Is there any way you can steal that Emolga's hold item and get a free Potion?

# ¿ Jun 12, 2017 22:43

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Omnicrom posted:

This right here is worth reiterating: All those hard Megaten games aren't hard right out the gate. The reason the Matador is such a shitwrecking difficulty spike is that up till that point you can sort of fumble through the game. The Hospital is easy street and the first couple of towns and overworld areas are pretty forgiving. Then you get to the Amala Network trip which is harder but you can still doable brute force and then the Underpass is also harder but you can still brute force it and then you hit the Matador whoops you're dead.

The funny thing is, I generally do find MegaTen games the most difficult in the beginning. OK, the hospital was a cakewalk and I barely remember steamrolling Forneus, but the beginning of a MegaTen game barring maybe the first dungeon is the most difficult because of the relative lack of options (still more than Uranium or Reborn give you, but that's neither here nor there). By the time the gimmick bosses come around, everyone on my team is immune to both types of instant kill and I have every elemental attack available to me on a demon who probably nullifies its main weakness, which cuts down on the difficulty.

Omnicrom posted:

The reason Matador is so notorious is that he's the comprehensive test for a class that a lot of players were not aware they were taking. If you "know" how to play Shin Megami Tensei games then Matador is completely fine, you have all the tools you need in front of you. On the other hand if you come into Nocturne because you heard it's a good game and you go about playing it like it's a Tales of or a Final Fantasy or a Golden Sun or something of a similar stripe he'll seem incredibly unfair.

This is also true. By the time I played Nocturne, I had already played Strange Journey, Devil Survivor Overclocked, and Persona 3 FES. Matador was still a challenge, and it took me a couple of tries to beat him, but he certainly wasn't as difficult as I felt everyone was making him out to be. On the other hand, I almost quit playing Strange Journey due to having to fight Gore.

Cythereal posted:

Explosion is a dumb gimmick for a team anyway. It's not bad as an occasional gently caress you, but an entire team built around it without giving you rock/steel/ghost types to let it whiff feels like a bad and unfun plan.

Or in this case, Ground types or Pokemon with Lightning Rod, because the terrain effect changes it to Electric because gently caress you that's why.

Robindaybird posted:

as mentioned by Matador, not only do you learn the press turn is important, but stat-changing moves are key to the MegaTen gameplan - in most JRPGs, if you're not doing direct damage or healing, you're wasting a turn, but in MegaTen, it's the difference between taking 100 damage an taking 23 damage

Or in Matador's case, being able to hit at all; Red Capote is x4 Sukukaja, which means you suddenly have like 20% accuracy without buffs of your own. It also teaches you how effective the accuracy/evasion buffs are; watching yourself whiff against Matador for a while will make you want to get some of that yourself.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2017 22:26

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

BioEnchanted posted:

Yeah, I've noticed that Megaten games do have early spikes, then the chill out for a bit afterwards. Shadow Yukiko in Persona 4 was really hard, and she's only the third dungeon, and the first complete one.

She's the third boss, counting the tutorial fights with Shadow Yosuke and Shadow Chie. But Shadow Chie occurs in the Castle, so even if you generously count the liquor store as a "dungeon", she's only the second. You can't go back to the room that was created for Misuzu, and there are no fights and everything happens in a cutscene the only time you're there, so that one can't count as a dungeon even by the loosest of definitions. At least there's two fights in the liquor store and you can go back there afterwards (only to get a weapon for Yosuke, though). Really, though, I'd count her as the game's first boss, because like I said, Shadow Yosuke and Chie are tutorial fights designed more to teach you how to play than to challenge you. Shadow Yukiko is the first time the game really tries to kick your rear end - and even in her nerfed Golden form, she can still do it fairly easily.

Rainuwastaken posted:

Adding onto the vulnerability thing, it doesn't help that most RPGs don't differentiate between "miss" and "completely ineffective, stop trying" for their status spells. So you never know if you should keep rolling the dice, or give up and just dump buckets of damage on their head.

Yeah, that's the main problem. In most RPGs, even if the status-effect spell has a chance of working, you have no way of knowing that, so it's usually better to to just pile on the damage, and maybe buff/debuff. Even when MegaTen doesn't give you a "block" or "null" when you use an ineffective spell, the spells are high-accuracy enough to allow you to conclude that an effect won't work if you can't get it to stick after a few tries. And in Pokemon status immunities are relatively rare and mostly logical (Poison types immune to Poison/Toxic, Fire types immune to Burn, Electric types immune to Paralysis, etc), so even if they're "hidden" it's not too hard to guess what will or won't work.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2017 21:00

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Onmi posted:

I think for my money, Pokemon Gaia is probably the best created Fangame I've played. In fact, you can tell it's one of the best because one bit of feedback I heard from it was

"This just looks like a Pokemon game you're not doing anything special!"

https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=326118

It isn't finished but it plays fine.

I find it amusing that they tout "sideways stairs" as a feature of their Pokemon romhack. I know, they're doing this on GBA and the games were never designed to do that, but it just seems like such a silly little thing to brag about. Especially when most of your target audience won't know what an achievement that really is.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 21:20

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Bruceski posted:

Half the old games that gave rise to that statement were bad game design from people who didn't know any better, so they're just staying true to form.

It's not so much "didn't know any better" as it was "were handcuffed by console limitations" and "half of them were arcade ports".

# ¿ Jun 27, 2017 19:46

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Waffleman_ posted:

Don't forget "This game has only a half hour of content if optimally played and you paid 80 dollars for it"

That's part of "handcuffed by console limitations". Yeah, it was possible to make games on the NES that had hours of content, but it's a lot easier now that storage space is measured in gigabytes rather than kilobytes. It was a lot easier to spend your six-month development cycle making the game harder in order to extend playtimes rather than trying to squeeze more content onto those tiny NES cartridges.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2017 01:21

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Randalor posted:

Floor 11 of the department store is specifically Evolutionary items. I'm guessing it's going to cost 10,000-15,000 dollars, and possibly be misspelled/mislabeled. Also, to get the the sticker to unlock the floor, you have to go through a gauntlet of the hardest battles in the game, because gently caress you.

I have to say, crap like this and their constantly-revised Pokemon availability lists are what makes Uranium, despite all of its flaws, seem more like the more fun game to actually play (unless you pick the Grass starter, I guess). Uranium's design philosophy is basically "Pokemon where everyone in the world breeds for competitive play". There might be bullshit fights where some Trainer has a min/maxed beast with maxed EVs and perfect IVs and Natures and a synergistic moveset or whatever bullshit goes into making a Pokemon the best murderbeast it can possibly be, but at least you get superweapons like Tracton, Inflageta, and Nucleon to play with as well. Reborn's design philosophy is "because gently caress you". You need to fight tooth and nail in order to have literally anything, and nearly every encounter is a puzzle boss with exactly one solution which you have to do exactly as the developers intended. If somebody discovers a way out of their "clever" traps, the Reborn devs simply remove whatever Pokemon was used to circumvent their "devious and perfect" game design, because gently caress you, that's why.

krisslanza posted:

I mean, I guess so far, at least I can say Reborn wasn't stupid enough to lock Berries behind the postgame at least? Smallest of silver linings!

Maybe not, but you probably have to fight six Wonder Guard Spiritombs or something equally bullshit to get the watering can.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 21:36

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

krisslanza posted:

So basically Reborn devs are the guys who made Absolute Virtue in FFXI

I've never played FF11 (I don't play MMOs, and especially not ones that I'm required to pay a subscription fee for), so I don't know who or what Absolute Virtue is. I have a feeling that since you mention this one boss specifically, though, the rest of the game isn't like that. Reborn so far seems to be a game where every fight is like this Absolute Virtue. Literally every encounter. And imagine you were only allowed fight it as a Blue Mage with strictly controlled access to Blue Magic spells (can't have you using Big Guard, White Wind, etc. You know, any fun or useful Blue Magic). THAT'S Reborn's design philosophy.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2017 22:14

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

I mean, if the battle is supposed to be a mildly interactive cutscene, then they screwed up by giving the boss stats at all, or at least a finite HP value. That's just invoking the Lord British Postulate ("if it has stats, players will try to kill it"). Also, didn't the WoW devs do something similar when somebody beat a boss or entered an area in a way they shouldn't have? Although I heard they were less ban-happy and tended to give the player a small reward for "helping them discover bugs" or something like that.

And if they made it look like a normal boss battle, they double hosed up. IMO, a cutscene boss battle should be obvious within the first few rounds (in a turn-based game) or within maybe a minute at most (in a real-time game), otherwise you're tricking the player into wasting consumable resources. Anything else should be winnable, no matter how difficult. Personally, I'd prefer the game let you win all battles, even if it requires a specific strategy or deep system mastery (like the second time you fight Balio and Sunder in BoF3), or is only feasible in New Game Plus (like Etna in Disgaea 2).

EDIT:

Eclectic Tastes posted:

EDIT: Just as a note, the "official" way to beat the boss was never discovered, with power creep eventually allowing players to just overpower the drat thing, which the devs didn't nerf because that would ultimately break their precious "intended" solution, which involved locking down its powers by having the players use their own matching powers the instant the boss used them, and then a bunch of other stuff the player base couldn't figure out from watching SE's official "dev team kills the boss for you so you plebs can finally do it RIGHT" video.

OK, maybe these guys were on Reborn's dev team.

Commander Keene fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Jul 4, 2017

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 00:15

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Wait, they patched their own intended solution out?

What.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 00:55

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Omnicrom posted:

Yep. Because it wasn't the "INTENDED" solution to killing Absolute Virtue.

Yes, the video that was posted by the devs as "this is how you're actually supposed to kill this boss" was not how you were actually supposed to kill this boss.

Seriously.

Why were these people allowed to make a video game? Were all of the intelligent, sane developers who made most of the previous FF games on vacation for FF11's dev cycle?

Dr. Fetus posted:

Honestly it just sounds to me like it was never intended to be killable, but they just didn't give it straight up invulnerability or told players that because the devs enjoyed watching them struggle or something. That's the only sane conclusion I can draw after I heard that they patched out their own "intended" solution.

Probably because they knew that their players would riot if they found out a raidboss was actually a cutscene boss that actually had invulnerability and they were afraid of dataminers or something finding out if they set an invulnerability flag or gave him infinite HP or something like that. I mean, think of it; a raidboss is supposed to be something a lot of players spend a significant amount of time on, and in the end discovering the drat thing was actually unkillable? I'd certainly quit a game over that kind of dickery, and I'd spread the word to anyone I knew thinking of playing it. I wouldn't even be surprised if some disgruntled players tried a class-action suit, which regardless of whether or not it worked, would draw negative attention to the game. "Players Sue Over Secretly Unkillable Video Game Boss" is a headline that would sound ridiculous to most people, but might well scare away potential players.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 03:37

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Dr. Fetus posted:

It wasn't a cutscene boss. Absolute Virtue had a random chance of spawning after killing another specific boss. (Nowadays it's guaranteed to spawn, but not when it was first released.) Absolute Virtue didn't have a grand entrance indicating that it was meant to be unkillable.

OK, I suppose what I meant by "cutscene boss" was a boss whose "boss fight" is basically a semi-interactive cutscene; heavily scripted and with an outcome decided beforehand. It covers bosses whose fights are unwinnable, bosses whose fights you can't lose, and bosses where the "victory condition" is to survive a set number of turns/reduce its HP to a specific non-zero amount/use X item or skill on it Y number of times. Basically, most boss fights that aren't "murder with extreme prejudice".

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 04:05

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

krisslanza posted:

Knowing the devs of Reborn, they'd probably remove that ability from the game or change it, or make their super bosses immune to it or something.

No, they'd just remove all Pokemon who have the ability to get either of those moves from any area or event prior to their "glorious" puzzle boss.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 22:40

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

the Orb of Zot posted:

Honestly, I'm amazed you even get an actual starter choice between every gen 1-6 starter.

Under their current design philosophy, your starter choice should be Sunkern/Litleo/Goldeen.

Is Litleo honestly bad enough to get lumped in with those two? Doesn't Sunkern have the lowest BST in all of the games?

* I've never played S/M, nor have I ever played (or considered playing) any Pokemon game competitively; I just know a few things through osmosis.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2017 00:29

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Yeah, their resistance to Fire basically meant you went from one-shotting them with Bulbasaur and Squirtle to two- or three-shotting them with Charmander. It was kind of mind-blowing when I realized that a type-disadvantage Fire move could deal more damage than a type-advantage Fighting move.

I used Butterfree leveled up to have Sleep Powder and Confusion against Brock, though. Anything a Psychic move couldn't one-shot was put to sleep.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2017 01:34

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Like this one!

# ¿ Jul 6, 2017 06:06

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Xelkelvos posted:

Detective Pokachu never got a US release, but apparently Legendary Pictures is trying to make a Live Action film based off of it.

Oh, good, we have a second chance to get Danny DeVito to voice a Pikachu.

Acebuckeye13 posted:

Let's just hope they get the casting right.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2017 21:31

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Yeah, the problem with Pansear is that Gen IV already had a much better fire monkey who references Journey to the West. You can't beat that with any ordinary fire monkey. And all three of them are just red monkey, blue monkey, and green broccoli-head monkey. Pansage is the most interesting of them, and that's not saying much.

They had a trio of monkeys, they could have at least referenced the whole "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" bit with them or done something.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2017 00:49

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:47

Commander Keene: Dec 21, 2016; Faster than the others

Onmi posted:

They're teenagers. Not the characters, the writers.

Even the ones in their 20s. Or 30s.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2017 09:23

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Let's Play Pokemon Reborn: This Trainwreck has no brakes my friend!