I had to constantly remind myself that I wasn’t playing a new commercial release but a goofy ass romhack made by a bunch of 4channers. Obviously they’re an incredibly talented group to get this much out of a Pokemon Fire Red rom.

Lets look at the scope for a moment

- 80+ hour adventure
- Completely new pokedex of 386 species
- New postgame locations and gyms
- OST of 200+ songs, some arrangements, some original
- Moves and abilities from future generations, alongside new ones

Incredible things were going on in /vp/ and I can’t really help being left in awe.

The elephant in the room when it comes to Clover is its rather offensive brand of humor, which makes sense considering its origins. To be honest, my sense of humor tends to be a bit on the chaotic side, so I could actually find some enjoyment out of Clover’s writing, even if it was mostly due to the general absurdity of it all. Due the humor, the story is essentially “Random shit happens abd then the game ends” in a way that makes it feel like a very crude version of Earthbound. Despite the aimlessness of the plot the finales of both the main and postgame end up delivering so it still winds up being satisfying enough.

Aside from that, the gameplay is pretty much perfect. The devs managed to establish a good balance between giving the player a sizable amount of powerful options to utilize while keeping the experience consistently challenging. Instead of forging the difficulty through insane stat sponges and unhinged level curves, the game instead employs a soft level curve, a 4 items limitation in battle (No revives either), and much more competent trainer teams and AI. It felt really good to use team builds that would be overkill in any mainline pokemon game and get threatened by teams that are just as powerful. That being said, I don’t think the difficulty ever goes too far. The most amount of attempts I’ve ever put into a mandatory battle was 5, and a couple others took me around 2-3 attempts, but even the easier battles led me into some intense close calls, and every meaningful encounter was engaging in their own way.

I originally expected to spend a couple of hours with Clover before playing it off and on over the course of many weeks. After essentially spending all of my free time playing this with my mind set on completing as much as possible, I realized this is something special. If you enjoy pokemon battle mechanics and don’t mind edgy 4chan themed humor, this might just be a must play game.

I’ll also add that Mozzamazel, Biteki, and Unjoy are my favorites.