Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 00:08 on May 20, 2020

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 21:57 on May 2, 2020

Simon and Garfunkel - The Sounds of Silence

Hello, darkness, my old friend...



Please support the official release!

twenty one pilots - Stressed Out

Let's be honest, here. I know you people, so there's really only one choi--



Oh, well then!

Silence

Why, yes, Fang IS incredibly, absurdly melodramatic. All the time. Somehow it never gets old or grating.



Mostly because right off the bat, we meet The Best Character.

Attack on Titan - Call of Silence

Alright. Alright. Now that we can see his dialogue portrait properly, I have to say: I love Fang's garbage cap. Among many other things, it has its flap on the side making it actively useless. It'd look garbage and stupid in reality, but on this edgelord, it really helps a lot.



So, I called Bro the best character before. I sure hope this prologue scene will make it obvious why.

Attack on Titan - Vogel im Kafig

...You probably jokingly called this thing a Magizard. Or maybe a Charikarp if you were feeling generous. No, yeah, that's literally its name.

And that is unironically great.

Silence

Linked Horizon - Guren no Yumiya

Silence

X Ambassadors - Torches

...Y'know what, I'm gonna keep doing this now. Just because.

Yeah, uh, so if this was any other game, this'd be a bit much. Fortunately, in-context, it's an obvious pisstake of fangames that add in OCs that are meant to be "cool" and "badass".



...Also, there's little bits of text for a bunch of things, but most of them are just kinda irrelevant. Nice to see Fang knows what's up.

Is this character development?

..Yeah, so, if we talk to him, we just get thrown out and the door gets locked.



There's nothing else of note in here, but we can find something nonspecific on his computer upstairs.

I say "nonspecific," but you know what it is from context.

MOVING ON

...Yep. What's that thing over in the corner?



Ah, it's our mother's grave.

Unlike at least one other Pokemon fangame, that wants to be taken seriously no less, we don't even get an achievement for this. What a ripoff!



Nothing left to do but get this free Potion hidden in a rock.



Also there's this shady guy. He sure exists.

Mozart - Lacrimosa (Requiem in D Minor)

Okay, so now we'll look over our three options. Yes, just three. Like a normal pokemon game. We only have three options!



Riolu is a Riolu. Pure Fighting, evolves into Lucario via Friendship because it's a baby. You know the deal with it, probably better than I do. Can't say I like Lucario much, personally.



Zorua is also a Zorua. Pure Dark, evolves into Zoroark at some point or another. You know what its deal is too, probably. I doubt anyone reading this doesn't know anything about Pokemon.



Rattastic is a pretty common ol' Rattastic. Psychic type, evolves into a Psychic/Dragon later. All very standard.

Honestly, the only subtle twist here is that all three of our starter choices cap after evolving once.



Obviously, we're taking this completely normal rat. You know its deal, really.

I probably shouldn't be allowed to nickname things, but I have unlimited power and no-one can stop me!

So, we got Rattastic, Bro got Zorua and Eulb got Riolu. This is probably the closest to an easy orientation here as we can get, thinking about it. Yeah, the balance doesn't work because Dark nulls Psychic and all, but I doubt we'll be fighting Bro much so it's not as big a deal as it could be.

Although, considering everything else, we do have to contend with the good odds that there'll be Approximately One Million Dark Types between now and the end. So there's that too.



...But, we do have one last thing to do in here. Of course we do.

Evanescence - Bring Me To Life (Nightcore)

lets be real here: it was a question of "when" not "if"



Ah, it took perhaps too long to get to this point, but we've finally got our first battle.

Seriously, one of this game's major flaws its that its script is in dire need of an editor. Just like every other Pokemon fangame, really!



Anyway, we start at level 10 instead of 5. This matters since it means we get to start with Confusion (which, as you know, is normally learned at level 9) instead of just Quick Attack. How nice.



Since we have both STAB and a type advantage, this is... very uneventful and easy. Bad RNG meant Eulb's Riolu lasted on like her last hit point but a Quick Attack deals with that.



If only he was smart enough to not let Bro pick second. He could've avoided this.





We get money for winning like normal. I see Eulb uses 16*Level for his formula.

Lacrimosa

We could not, sure, but let's be real here. This is a non-choice.



There's no animation or anything. Eulb just becomes a skull on the floor, and we snag another $200 from his corpse. So, we get paid twice for winning. Not too shabby, that.

Torches

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 18:49 on Mar 20, 2020

Torches

We're pretty much done with Crimson Town now. There's a couple small things left to do before we move on for good, though.



First, we have this guy.

Honestly, not much of a Daredevil fan. Or comics in general for that matter.



Anyway, we never did a Pokemon battle with this guy so that means we just committed murder. Illegal murder.

I'm sure it'll be fine.

Lacrimosa

Oh, right. We could've seen this before, but it would've made no sense.

..Actually, hm, I wonder. Let's head back to the house we started in for a second then.



Fang gets a sneak peek at Hope Rising, but we sure don't. Rude.

Okay, now we're done with Crimson Town for the time being. Let's just head on ou--

...Right, okay. I see she's living up to her name already. But this was definitely a bad target. He was a nice man! He gave me candy!



Also our rat is very fast. And, of course, good at Special stuff. Just can't let her get punched. Even though she resists punches.

...The colour-coding is backwards to what I keep thinking it is, because this is Speed up and Defense down. Yeah.



And now we can at least try to leave, before Bro stops us. We're so close! I can see the route from here!

Maroon 5 - This Love

Oh, of course, our first route is 666. Of course it i--



oh my god are you serious right now

...Yes, well aware. I read your book.

It was poo poo! I read it anyway!



Dammit Fang, he was leaving! We were free!

How sensible. And, yeah, normally I'd groan about the whole "team of level 100s" thing if it wasn't so blatantly knocking on the fourth wall in-context.

Anyway, yes, we're finally free to explore Route 666 some.



It is, uh, incredibly short and linear. There's three whole patches of grass here, at least. And a free (albeit hidden) Great Ball! We'll save this for something later.



Also we'll talk to this kid. He's clearly our tradtional Ledge Kid, in that he explains how ledges work.

Final Fantasy VII Advent Children - Those Who Fight

So, before we finish up on this route, we'll take a quick look at all the many things we can encounter around here. Like this Wurmple. It's a perfectly normal Wurmple.

If I had to guess, it's evolution will be locked into being Beautifly, since that is (by far) the edgier of the two.



Nice surprise is that this game is generous enough to do EXP on capture.



As a general rule, unless I specify otherwise, nicknames come entirely from me. You can tell because they're stuff that I find funny or dumb references to other things.

Sometimes, if you're really lucky, both!



Mankey being available immediately is one of the reasons why I didn't bother taking Riolu by the way.

But mostly it's just because I don't like Lucario.



She has one job, later, and that is to kick things very hard.

That's because she's too low a level to know how to hit things without kicking them.



Of all the first route trash rodents, we get the one that I like the least. Figures.



I'll still catch it, though. Just on principal, if nothing else. I cannot guarantee I will ever use him, mind.



Ah, here we go. Another early game rodent. Squirro's pretty weak, all told, and doesn't even evolve.



But she's a completely normal squirrel, so that makes sense. Nothing fancy or unusual. Just a normal squirrel.



Also the requisite bird. And this time it's the best one!



...I may have accidentally knocked out the first one, but that's not the point. The name'll maybe make sense later. Possibly.



And lastly we have an emo monkey. Much like with Yuri, I, uh, accidentally knocked one out and then spent far too long trying to encounter another.



They're not even that rare, as far as I can tell, but this game has a very strong desire sensor effect.

There's one last thing available on this route, but it's in the water so we'll be back for it later.

This Love

Bring Me To Life (Nightcore)

...Yeah, uh, so. Remember how I said that sometimes it just forgets to have a punchline? How about times like this, where there IS a punchline but it's "Fang is a dick to an orphan."

Yep. It's... not good, that one.



He just as a squirrel and a beaver, so he's appropriate to the "small child" trainer archetype but it's just... bleh.

This Love

Poor kid. We'll just... move further to the east, since I see a route gate over there.



Ah, also an evil Team member!

BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle - SUSANOOH

...Kel Maiselv. Not exactly subtle, but it's fine. Pretty sure Team Blade Members here are sprite edit of Team Plasma grunts? The Black/White 1 version, specifically.



Ah, his one thing is a level 10 Poochyena.

Since I messed with chronology for the sake of combining all the wild Pokemon together, we don't have a monkey to one-shot it with a kick.



But it's okay, because we do have a Completely Normal Squirrel that can beat it without much effort all the same.

This Love

...Uh, that seems... abrupt.

I mean, sure, if he didn't, Fang probably would've anyway but that's not the point.



I'm just gonna skip over these from now on, because it's pretty consistent about it.

Oh. Huh. That sure is an option.



And it gives us another $200 for good measure. That sure is something, I guess. Nothing else between us and the gate, though. Let's take a peek inside!

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

pitched down a bit in-game, which with how RMXP works means its running at ~50% speed



Oddly enough, this is something that does get explained. Kind of.

Icon for Hire - Hollow

music change #1 - normally the same track from the gatehouse keeps playing but i swapped this in instead



Because we're now in our second locale:



Hollow City!



...Well, that's different.

Also, yes, this city chugs awfully because of the perpetual rain because RMXP is quite bad. I kinda hope this isn't how it's supposed to be. I pray to God it's not normal.



Fortunately we can immediately dip inside this building, to have a real framerate and few someone's... financial records?

Ah, it was this guy's. Let's head upstairs an--





...We were never here.



Because this game does bother to follow basic decency when it comes to area design, we have a Poke Center quite close to the entrance. Also there's this Trubbish sitting outside it.

Ooh, this is very handy! We'll head back to Route 666 to give it some use once we're done here, don't worry.

First, let's head next do-



Oh, Bro's here. And I think I see someone with pink hair over to the side as well.

We'll go inside first.



So, uh, remember how sometimes there's just no joke at all? And it's simply just incredibly edgy?

There uh...

There is definitely at least one guy on the writing team who needed slapping upside the head once. Maybe twice. Ideally would have not been on the writing team at all.

We'll ignore Bro and the other one for now. Up to the left of the Poke Center, we can find three more buildings. One of them is most useful indeed.

$100 Pokeballs. Barring a need for anything else, I think I'll be getting all my balls from the communists.

We can buy a lot, but it's annoyingly one at a time. Yeah. Bleh.

The building to the immediate left here is thoroughly boring and irrelevant.



Next to it, we have the cop that kid in the alleyway was on about. He disappears in a fade to black...



Which lets us get another piece of candy.



Over to the other side, we have... the Meowth from the anime, I guess. Sure, whatever. That's a more relatively sane level of edgy joke than some of the other stuff we've seen.



Just gonna take a quick second to deposit some stuff into the PC.

This Love

Those Who Fight

It's just a simple little fish is all. We, uh, we fail to catch this one.



But a second one? That goes just fine.

Not bothering with a nickname though. Now we can head back to Hollow Ci--

Replica

I can't believe they beat me up and stole my fish! Guess we'll have to get a bit more creative about this then.



Oh my God!

It's hideous!


(nickname this time comes from OtakuHackerSA (he tells me its a Digimon Cyber Sleuth reference))

I still caught it though, of course. We have an awful, bright red fish that is also a gun. We need to keep him...



Under Ghlock and quay.

Hollow

Yahn is, well, Yahn. She's still just kinda here.



And that leaves us with Bro. Clearly the most important part of the city.

Bring Me To Life (Nightcore)

...Wow, Bro's battle sprite is... it's really bad. Jeez.



Aww, he caught a Bidoof. At least he level grinded it up to 10.

But it's just a Bidoof, so we're not exactly in any danger here.



His Zorua might seem like a bit more of a threat, but here's the thing about that:



It's still at its base level. Our perfectly normal squirrel can very easily take it.

Hollow

Ah, that's our Bro! He wouldn't die, even if we killed him!



We still can't leave the city via the north exit though, so that means we have to check out this place.



...Oh, it's... it's the first gym. Well then! I think we should probably care about this just a tiny bit more than we have been so far? Pretty sure I know how fangames work.

And there is quite a lot of red on the floor here...

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Feb 15, 2020

One-Punch Man - BATTLE!!

So, before we do the gym proper I'm gonna take a moment to get most of our team up to level 10. Purely so they're at the baseline, yeah. This means Tina here gets to evolve, of course, but unlike normal she only has one evolution path available.



I genuinely think this has managed to look less edgy than Cascoon. Though this also confirms that it's not gonna be a Beautifly, which is a shame. We'll deal with it, I suppose.



Just gonna push her up to her final form already, though. I don't really get the name here, since she's supposedly a locust. Pretty sure locusts don't exactly buzz. Cicada totally do, though.

...Anyway, we're not gonna be using her at all for the rest of this. I'm instead gonna be boring but effective, because I can.

Persona 3 - When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars

Hmm, nah, we're fine. We don't need to worry about that.



So, this is our first gym and it's pretty straight forward. That door to our right is an impenetrable wall right now, so we'll go left.

Bring Me To Life (Nightcore)

Ah, I see she's a recolour of the Lass sprite. Complete with dodgy anatomy and a definitely-not-broken right leg. At least That Girl is a good Trainer Class name.



The actual fight here is really uninteresting though. She has 3 Poochyena. And that's it.

When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars

Not gonna have too many problems with the fights here judging from this one.



It mightn't have been super easy to see, but there's a little button on the floor here.



This has opened the door over to the right, so we can go further in. Yeah, for a first gym this is a bit more involved than a normal game. Not to say that it's involved or anything, though; just relatively moreso than a regular first gym.



Also apparently the interior design is over a bottomless chasm? That's definitely a new one.



There's another door to the left this time, but first we have to deal with a couple more battles I see.

Bring Me To Life (Nightcore)

Ah, That Guy is a Youngster recolour. His 69 shirt is very simplistic and that makes it quite Nice.



Unlike Nightshade, he doesn't just have two Poochyena. Though he does have one and it's pretty much nothing.



His second one is a Sneasel though! That's pretty cool, but it

When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars

Bring Me To Life (Nightcore)

Just the one this time, huh? Since he's Shadow, you might expect a gun...



But we get a rad little dog instead! This isn't really all that difficult a fight either, but it is quite annoying.



Little fella really likes to spam Roar. Just makes things take longer than they should, really.

When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars

Only thing beyond Shadow is another button on the floor. This lets us get past that door to the left here.



Probably didn't expect Team Blade in here, huh?

SUSANOOH

Harakiri here only has one thing as well, it turns out.



Unfortunately for him, it's a Pawniard. Which means he's quad-weak to getting kicked by a monkey. Ah well. He tried so hard and came so far. But in the end, it didn't even matter.

When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars

Bring Me To Life (Nightcore)

Ah, an Ace Trainer. Who's an... Ace Trainer... huh. I can't even pretend this is normal, because this IS normal. Maybe not for the first gym, but still!



Oh, and she has a powerful locust.



Since it's Bug/Dark, we can't do a ton of damage to it in oneshot right now, but it doesn't hurt us much either. No, it didn't do 14 damage here.



As an ol' fashioned slugmatch, we have a bit of an edge. And it gives Very Nice EXP since he was a third stage and all.

When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars

The button here is in this very room; it's just to our left, even. You can see it there between the skull piles. It's right next to Fang's fantasically dumb hat in his portrait.

And what's behind door number 3?



Ah, our gym leader.

...Iwatodai...?

Maximum The Hormone - What's Up, People!

Minato Iwatodai here is our first fight that I might have to actually take seriously. He does only have two Pokemon, which is a fantastically nice move and suits the first gym leader.



Houndour's the opener, eh? Rather notably, it's even a lower level than the one we already beat in here.



Unless something goes tragically wrong, Laffite has this though. She can solo this entire fight.



Her first Low Kick here doesn't quite get a oneshot, but it's super close.



9 damage from an Ember is not even remotely threatening. At least it's not Roar.



Second hit takes it down and... wait, hang on. It was in red HP. Iwatodai didn't use an item to heal it...?



...Oh. He... he has no items. In fact, off the top of my head no enemy trainers have items! That's probably a result of the lack of time to fully complete everything, but I'm gonna enjoy it all the same.



Laffite levels up and is finally smart enough to know how to properly hurt stuff without kicking their shins. Since I don't plan on using her much, or even possibly at all, beyond this, I drop Focus Energy.



Iwatodai's second/last is the evolved form of our own edgy monkey. The, uh, the other one. I wonder where he got the Dawn Stone for this, though.



Ah, it's fast enough to go first. Punishment is a gimmicky move that apparently does more damage the more you're buffed. That's pretty neat, but we have no unconditional buffs yet so it's quite weak.



Relatively. 12 damage while resisted isn't that great for us. If he gets through Laffite, that could be actually dangerous!



Of course, we can bring it down to roughly 1/3rd its max HP in one hit.



Its second move rolled slightly lower so it only did 11. Which means we kick it really hard and win.



Pretty good EXP too, of course.



Which mean we've got our first gym leader beaten!





Nice money for once, too.

Hang on, something about this doesn't seem right. Weren't we supposed to be doing something else...?

When The Moon's Reaching Out Stars

Silence

Call of Silence

Fang really is a FOOL!





Yeah, you probably saw that coming. A very obvious joke that had been made repeatedly for a decade before this game.

Including being alluded to in Persona 3 itself.

Silence

Hollow

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 19:35 on Mar 21, 2020

Since we've got the chance here, let's take a little look through an alternative timeline or four. Just because; we'll collapse three of 'em right sharpish though.

Also jeez, this is the Emerald font which is the default. I've gotten so used to the FRLG one that I kinda think it looks bad now. At least here; it looks fine in its own game though.



Nothing tells you this as far as I can tell, but there's a handy quicksave feature. Which is mapped to... V...? Sure. Sure, okay.



We have three starters to pick up, so we'll get through these quickly. Fang has nothing to say for Riolu, but Bro...

But that just makes two. I promised three.



And over here we can find our fourth of three starters. It's a bit of a secret though, so of course it's...



An Eevee!

Nah, it's great. Of course we're taking an...





Eevee...?

Since none of these are obviously effective against Trubbish, it's not exactly clear what Bro'll take.



But he's the smartest person in the room, so he takes the Original Pokemon, Do Not Steal.

Eulb ends up taking Riolu, which does have a type advantage (of sorts) on us for once. Well, after it evolves anyway.



This one line is the only thing that meaningfully changes before the fight. "Meaningfully" in this case is being used very liberally.



Eevee...?'s default moveset makes it very easy to lose this fight on purpose. Which we're absolutely going to do.



I got bored of spamming Toxic Spikes when he refused to hit me for a bit.

So, even if we lose to Eulb, we don't get murdered by him. Ah well, was worth a shot to see if it'd work. But... I wonder...



One last little "what if" here. What if we beat Eulb and then let him live.

Heck, what if in this alternative timeline, we kill no one?

Can't think of many times off-hand where this comes up, but Trubbish does get a few bits of dialogue unique to it. That's why Alt-Fang will be using it.



Oh, there's.... there's Sacred Ash right by our dilapidated old house. Like, right there, next to Mom's grave. Well then!

We'll just skip all the way ahead to Hollow City next. There's nothing interesting in the interim.



This is something I just straight up missed before, but if we talk to this guy in the alleyway like 5 times in a row...





He just sorta dies from an overdose. Fortunately for Alt-Fang here, this doesn't even count as a death we caused.



Three things to actually do here, though. First is in our fight with Bro.



We're just gonna... throw it. This one's harder to lose than the Eulb one; I just took a level 6 Wurmple into this fight and nothing else. Still took a bit though.



And when we lose... nothing happens. We even get a full heal for our current party out of this. Can retry whenever, even.



So, we're 2/2 for not getting any negative repercussions from losing. How about Iwatodai, then?

Ah, a bright red screen, complete with generic violence noises and a blunt Game Over text.



And sure enough, it kicks us back to the title screen.












Okay, one last thing. If we take our gun out of jail, put everything else in a box and then leave town...

Okay, so we just got... something. This is a good way to prevent the game from just bricking itself, which is nice. What did we get?



...Oh. A, uh, a level 20 Luvdisc.

Yes. Level 20 sounds high for here, but...



Still a Luvdisc, though, so she's cold garbage. Especially with the Special Attack stat being reduced by her nature.

Oddly, this thing isn't even in the Pokedex normally. Even if you get it here, it's not added to the dex at all. There's no other way to get it, no-one uses it, and it feels like it's part of that whole "running out of time" thing.

If you hack it into a random encounter and catch it, its dex ID is listed as 370. Which is its National Dex number. The highest for the actual regional is like somewhere in the mid 70s. Yeah. Bit of an oops, that!

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Mar 2, 2020