This game is on the precipice of greatness, the biggest fault it has is that the game engine is extremely buggy and unpolished. It's understandable why the game had to use a separate engine as opposed to a romhack to support all the new mechanics and the massive number of unique fusions, but knowing that doesn't make things like the non-looping music, awkward and often broken overworld interactions, and just generally crusty gamefeel any more palatable. If it can ever achieve a state of being relatively bug free and having a presentation level on par or even close to the GBA/DS games it stands a very good shot at becoming the best Pokemon game in general. Despite the issues I mention here it does seem to integrate the Pokemon battle mechanics totally faithfully, or so close that any differences will be imperceptible to the average player.
Onto discussing the game itself, the premise is right in the title. The game adds a unique mechanic allowing you to fuse any combination of any two Pokemon (of the 400 or so present within the game currently). You can choose one as the head (which inherits the special and hp stats) and one as the body (which inherits the physical and speed stats) meaning you've actually got two possible fusions for every single combination.
The degree of freedom this gives you with mixing and matching types, stat allocations and movepools (the fusion combines the moveset of both its parents) is staggering. You can created extremely overpowered or hilariously pathetic Pokemon. Of course enemy trainers are packing fused Pokemon as well, so you'll need to put thought into your combinations to compete with their juiced up super-teams. Fusions and de-fusions are performed via an in-game item which costs a small sum of money, about as much as a pokeball. Enough to make them cheap and plentiful, but also to make you consider what you're doing before you go combining willy-nilly, at least until late in the game when you're swimming in cash.
It's really hard to state how much this adds to the play experience, combining one of the best features of Shin Megami Tensei with Pokemon's own roster of cool and unique designs. For the first time in a long time I found myself going out to just catch as many Pokemon as possible in the Safari Zone so I could experiment with all the cool combinations I could make. Now all those box Pokemon aren't just filler destined to waste away collecting space and could easily become a staple of your team by combining them with one of your lead Pokemon.
The game world itself is primarily a recreation of the Kanto story from the original Pokemon games with the new mechanic integrated slightly into the plot. While there are occasional instances of what I would call 'romhacker humor' peppered throughout the game it was thankfully kept to a very minimum amount. No edgy OCs or cursing here, just the basic Gen 1 storyline with a few small adjustments to the story to accommodate the fusion element. This is great since it lets what this fangame does well, the awesome fusion mechanics, shine without distracting from them or bloating its scope with a whole new region. There's also a very healthy postgame that sees you traveling through Johto and the Sevii Islands that's well worth playing. It's a game rich with content.
Speaking of one of the real hidden gems of this game are some of the NG+ features unlocked only after completing it. The player unlocks a whole host of options for customizing their new playthroughs. You can play through a version with remixed or randomized enemy trainers, change the mechanics to exclusively utilize double or even triple battles, carry over your box Pokemon and other cool features. The double battle option is especially welcome from me as someone who vastly prefers that format over singles, though it has an unfortunate bug where it has to be set back to 2v2 in the options again every time you face a trainer who has only a single Pokemon. This is rare enough to not be a major issue, but it's another thing which highlights the game's lack of polish and how it can occasionally hinder the player experience.
The game boasts over 170,000 Pokemon fusions and about 1/3 of them have unique, custom made sprites. These are made from community members and vary in quality, but even the worst of the custom made ones tend to be decent and the best of them are fantastic and inspired designs that wouldn't look out of place in a mainline game. Often times it's worth it to fuse Pokemon just to see the cool combinations you can get, and the game has the decency to highlight which fusions have custom made sprites with a green silhouette when you're mixing them in the menu. Unfortunately the quality of these makes the ugly, auto-generated sprites many of them still use stand out even more. But with more being added every day and close to 60,000 already done it's not unreasonable to think one day we could see the whole Pokedex, from start to finish, all with beautiful custom sprites. It's a really amazing community effort!
I think this game is absolutely worth playing for anyone who likes Pokemon or even just monster collecting rpgs in general. If you can deal with some jank go and play it asap, if not keep a close eye on it as the project has so much love put into it already I can't imagine it won't be getting updated and having its issues ironed out for a long time.
Onto discussing the game itself, the premise is right in the title. The game adds a unique mechanic allowing you to fuse any combination of any two Pokemon (of the 400 or so present within the game currently). You can choose one as the head (which inherits the special and hp stats) and one as the body (which inherits the physical and speed stats) meaning you've actually got two possible fusions for every single combination.
The degree of freedom this gives you with mixing and matching types, stat allocations and movepools (the fusion combines the moveset of both its parents) is staggering. You can created extremely overpowered or hilariously pathetic Pokemon. Of course enemy trainers are packing fused Pokemon as well, so you'll need to put thought into your combinations to compete with their juiced up super-teams. Fusions and de-fusions are performed via an in-game item which costs a small sum of money, about as much as a pokeball. Enough to make them cheap and plentiful, but also to make you consider what you're doing before you go combining willy-nilly, at least until late in the game when you're swimming in cash.
It's really hard to state how much this adds to the play experience, combining one of the best features of Shin Megami Tensei with Pokemon's own roster of cool and unique designs. For the first time in a long time I found myself going out to just catch as many Pokemon as possible in the Safari Zone so I could experiment with all the cool combinations I could make. Now all those box Pokemon aren't just filler destined to waste away collecting space and could easily become a staple of your team by combining them with one of your lead Pokemon.
The game world itself is primarily a recreation of the Kanto story from the original Pokemon games with the new mechanic integrated slightly into the plot. While there are occasional instances of what I would call 'romhacker humor' peppered throughout the game it was thankfully kept to a very minimum amount. No edgy OCs or cursing here, just the basic Gen 1 storyline with a few small adjustments to the story to accommodate the fusion element. This is great since it lets what this fangame does well, the awesome fusion mechanics, shine without distracting from them or bloating its scope with a whole new region. There's also a very healthy postgame that sees you traveling through Johto and the Sevii Islands that's well worth playing. It's a game rich with content.
Speaking of one of the real hidden gems of this game are some of the NG+ features unlocked only after completing it. The player unlocks a whole host of options for customizing their new playthroughs. You can play through a version with remixed or randomized enemy trainers, change the mechanics to exclusively utilize double or even triple battles, carry over your box Pokemon and other cool features. The double battle option is especially welcome from me as someone who vastly prefers that format over singles, though it has an unfortunate bug where it has to be set back to 2v2 in the options again every time you face a trainer who has only a single Pokemon. This is rare enough to not be a major issue, but it's another thing which highlights the game's lack of polish and how it can occasionally hinder the player experience.
The game boasts over 170,000 Pokemon fusions and about 1/3 of them have unique, custom made sprites. These are made from community members and vary in quality, but even the worst of the custom made ones tend to be decent and the best of them are fantastic and inspired designs that wouldn't look out of place in a mainline game. Often times it's worth it to fuse Pokemon just to see the cool combinations you can get, and the game has the decency to highlight which fusions have custom made sprites with a green silhouette when you're mixing them in the menu. Unfortunately the quality of these makes the ugly, auto-generated sprites many of them still use stand out even more. But with more being added every day and close to 60,000 already done it's not unreasonable to think one day we could see the whole Pokedex, from start to finish, all with beautiful custom sprites. It's a really amazing community effort!
I think this game is absolutely worth playing for anyone who likes Pokemon or even just monster collecting rpgs in general. If you can deal with some jank go and play it asap, if not keep a close eye on it as the project has so much love put into it already I can't imagine it won't be getting updated and having its issues ironed out for a long time.
Reviewed on Apr 24, 2023