I was relatively excited to see this one despite not really being a fan of Family Guy. After years of hearing how this is one of the best cartoon tie-in games ever, I can finally say it's... painfully mid. Emphasis on 'painfully' because I wasn't expecting this game of all games to be difficult to play through.

The presentation is alright, most characters made for 2D mediums won't look as good in 3D but if I can forgive Hit & Run then I can certainly forgive this one as it does try to emulate the style of the original show and does it well enough for PS3-era graphics. The fanservice is also really nice... well, to a point; after a while it does sort of become "haha yes I know Fam Guy" and gets especially egregious when they copy jokes from the show basically word-for-word. Though the aforementioned Hit & Run had similar references, the copied lines were basically limited to occasional quips heard whilst driving whereas it's very 'in your face' here. It did become genuinely tiring by the time of the seventh stage.

The gameplay is here, it works most of the time. It's nothing all that special to be honest. Most of what I remember were frustrating aspects that I basically had to play around, such as the weapon wheel sometimes just deciding to not swap your weapon because... I dunno. Combat is enjoyable at first but quickly gets repetitive, I think by the third level I discovered an infinite loop with the melee attack that just trivialized isolated enemy encounters. I suspect the devs knew this too as they'll often just chuck a big number of enemies at you, and then another wave of the same enemies, and then another... but unlike other beat 'em up games like Final Fight or River City where you're constantly on the move between waves, this game just expects you to stay and fight in one area to fight them all. And when I eventually gave up and just ignored enemies, stages became far shorterer... unfortunately the most annoying stage in the game cannot be beat this way, but it definitely would be incredibly short if not for the dumb amount of enemies constantly barraging you. This issue is especially egregious during the final boss fight, which would have been an enjoyably fun stage if not for the seemingly infinite number of enemies getting in your way and leading to repeated unnecessary death.

Honestly the most fun comes from the multiplayer, and it's at this point I should say I only played this game because a friend wanted to do co-op with it. If not for them I wouldn't have picked this up at all, let alone finish it. But anyways... the most fun was the multiplayer, mainly the 'capture the flag' ripoff which was just a lot of chaotic fun even with only two people barely understanding the game. The MOST fun was the second to last story stage where it turns into a 1v1 battle for two players, a worthy reward for suffering the game's flaws to that point. I wish it had just been a full Street Fighter clone at that point, but I loved it regardless.

Sorry to say but I obviously didn't understand the hype for this one. This mediocre, annoying to complete on minimal objectives game is one of the best tie-in games? ...I can't tell if people are just accepting anything that isn't the PS2 Family Guy, or if their tolerance is far more sturdy than mine. Because this game had a promising start but just became unfun to beat. Good for you if you like it, but I don't get it.

The track pack I'm sure most of us have known about for years, but very few have actually played. I was one of those people until around December of last year when I finally looked into playing these tracks for myself... and yeah it's about what you expect from them, which is both a good and bad thing.

First off, I'd say your opinion playing this will likely be influenced by what you think of base Mario Kart Wii to begin with. If you're a fan of the chaotic shenanigans the title offers then you'll probably be down for more tracks and options that add to the messiness, whilst I don't see those who aren't much a MKWii enjoyer getting a lot out of this. That by itself isn't a negative thing to be held against the mod though, as you'd definitely expect (and probably want) a Mario Kart Wii mod to play like... Mario Kart Wii, funnily enough. It's not like the abundance of Brawl mods that just make it into inferior Ultimate or Melee on Wii, so I appreciate very much the dedication to the game's original style.

Of course, you'll be playing this for the custom tracks. Imagine playing a mod pack with 200+ new tracks and still picking junk like Moo Moo Meadows, couldn't be me. Anyways, the custom tracks. Boy there sure are a fuckton of them, and that itself is another positive/negative splice for the mod; the positive of course being you've got a LOT of variety to pick from here. The negative being how much of that variety you'll actually like or even give half of a shit about, which itself depends upon a lot of factors. Are you here for fully original tracks? Would you prefer retro tracks recreated in Wii's style and engine? Do you play full anarchy and not give a shit about what comes from where? Well of the 200+ tracks, 56 are retro courses (bump it up to 58 if you count the CTR tracks, but I personally don't) which doesn't look like a lot and honestly did surprise me as playing the game it felt like there were so many more retro tracks that counting them all out to not even be a half of the total pack gave me a "wait what" moment. Whilst I'll admit I'm open to just about anything the game can throw at me, I have mainly been enticed by the original courses; retro tracks are cool to see but just about all of them have re-appeared in the official games at this point (not even counting Tour) so to see them come back is nice but not as interesting as seeing the abominations people make.

Actually, that is where much of the negative track designs lies. The fully original tracks, ironic given I'll admit to preferring these and wanting more of them. Whilst you get some really fun tracks like Dawn Township, Unfinished Mario Circuit, Dragonite's Island, Desktop Dash, and Sea Stadium... there are also tracks with "git gud"-esque designs (typically sudden sharp turns all over the place) such as Rush City Run, or whatever the fuck Undiscovered Offlimit is meant to be. Good gods, Undiscovered Offlimit may as well be the posterchild for how not to make a Mario Kart custom tracks with how it mashes every set piece together without a second thought and left us (though mainly me) saying "what the fuck is this" and "where the fuck am I" when we'd picked it for the first time not knowing what to expect of such a unique name. At this point it's a track we pick for the 'meme' of it, or the track I have a horrified scream at when the random selection picks it and leaves my friends laughing at my terror. ASDF_Course was similarly the very first custom track we picked, and was not a good introduction to the world of Mario Kart mods for my friends who were in the dark apart from me promising "guys this'll be worth it". Though in fairness, the retro tracks have been the most consistently high-quality part of the pack thus far regardless of none of us really liking the few SNES Mario Circuits they included among other retro offerings. But honestly, the bad/underwhelming tracks just stick with me more it appears, and on the whole the mixed bag of track quality is still... mainly positive, considering the quantity as well. It's just more fun to remember and riff on the bad ones, though that's not to say they aren't very much present.

Aside from the custom tracks, CTGP also offers some extra tid-bits in the form of 200cc and Item Rain options. You can also enable every item to be droppable when racers are toppled, which we've kept on since the beginning and haven't looked back. It feels like a natural addition to the game and honestly a lot of fun for something that seems so minor. But what about 200cc and Item Rain? Starting with the former, it's an incredibly mixed bag... so many of these tracks were not designed for 200cc gameplay and even as someone who loves the format in MK8DX it takes much more adjusting to here considering the unorthodox track designs and the fact there's 200+ of the damn things. We ended up quitting the mode after an occurrence on the aforementioned Unfinished Mario Circuit however, where one of us ended up clipped out of bounds and unable to get back in (not even Lakitu would help due to the location) because he went fast enough to get over an invisible boundary wall. If we grinded the hell out of 200cc it would probably be enjoyable, but we ended up sticking to 150cc after that happened. It was funny but also understandably annoying after we realized the only way out was waiting for the DNF. As for Item Rain, it's a funny little side-mode to turn on from time to time. Nothing too serious so it's good for adding to the fun mood if that's your cup of tea, though also not a mode we'd want to keep permanently on. Just something to mess with for a few rounds.

Wow I typed a fuckton of words (too bad I'm not reading them amirite), certainly more than I was expecting to for this thing. Honestly despite my harshness at points this is a really fun time... if you've got the people to play it with of course. Whilst a big benefit to this pack is the inclusion of Wiimmfi so you can play the game online again, including the custom tracks, I've found the most fun I've had to be playing it as a 'couch multiplayer' activity with local friends. It's none too serious, you can have a pizza and some soda/alcohol whilst you laugh together, it's a very chill vibe and brings back the enjoyment of playing Mario Kart as dumb little kiddy winks. Though... as stated near the start of this, your mileage will heavily balance on how much you enjoy Mario Kart Wii as it is. It's the most popular entry by far but it definitely has a fair share of detractors/un-enjoyers, and I severely doubt Undiscovered Offlimit will be changing their minds anytime soon. But to finally close this stupidly long post out: Overall, CTGP Revolution is fun with the right people despite its flaws in not having the best quality tracks at all corner, fun as it may be to have a laugh when these bad tracks do pop-up. I'll be playing this for ages to come, so if my thoughts change I'll make a follow-up. But for now, 3.5/5 feels right. It's a mess of the most beautiful kind and I love it for what it is.

"Wow your second favourite game has a five-star review what a twist" ok and? If you ask me, it's a very deserved five-star rating. Because as a long-time fan of this hidden gem, my rating for the original version would be four-stars instead. Whilst the cores are still present in both versions, this remade version proves incredibly faithful whilst improving upon most of the issues the predecessor had. As well as offering a brand-new ending sequence to go for, which is actually the reason I'm giving this a five-star review. I won't spoil any little bit of it, but it ties everything together very nicely and feels very naturally integrated. In fact, this replay was for the purpose of showing the game to my partner (we were gonna start Xenoblade but wanted something shorter for the time being) and he was convinced that the ending sequence was part of the original version until I showed him otherwise. That goes to show the beauty and perfection of it all, if you ask me.

But enough pure gushing on a personal level, what about objective positives? The sprite art is 100% one of these, the HD-2D style was the perfect way to present this game and of the games currently made with this style still stands as my favourite-looking (although Octopath 2 certainly stands on-par with it in this department, which I'm very glad to see). The gameplay system is something else I would really call an objective positive, it's very unique and easy to get to grips with, though some people would likely disagree with me here. Whilst the gameplay style isn't everyone's cup of tea, if nothing else it's really well made and works like a dream. The variety in what each character can do helps battles from feeling too stale and moreso when you get multiple party members to play with, even if some generic encounters can be won by spamming your highest power attacks that's not always gonna fly in the boss battles. Or even some rarer random encounters. My point is, the game is easy to pick-up and learn... as this is my fifth overall playthrough though (counting the SNES original and this remake) that may be unfair of me to say as I can easily just hop into the game at a moment's notice by now. Each chapter as well has their own unique spin on things and I feel they're all implemented as close to perfect as can be, if not outright perfect. It gives each era a unique identity beyond just the characters and set-pieces, but truly makes the time period feel more alive by incorporating unique twists into the way the game is played. The only one I'd say falls flat is the Near Future's mind reading gimmick since it amounts to guessing if you have to talk or read minds to progress the plot in certain areas, but even then I like the idea and don't think the slightly lackluster implementation is a cardinal sin.

Another 100% positive I've seen nearly everyone agree on is the soundtrack. Live A Live's OST was already one of my favourites of all-time, so having Yoko Shimomura revisit her RPG debut made it all the sweeter. Both versions of the soundtrack absolutely slap but the remake does an arguably better job in a lot of places, this even factoring in my nostalgic bias. Yes, the original version of War In China will always get me pumped-up and Unseen Syndrome will make me feel an empty dread each time it pops-up in the cutscenes. But their remade equivalents are very much on-par, if not outright superior: War In China's slightly slower pace fits the patient demeanor of Shifu, whilst still having an energetic instrumentation and backing track that gives the vibe of a martial arts battle. Unseen Syndrome likewise recaptures a horrific, empty feeling with droning sound, mechanical instruments, and discordant backing that all give the feeling that something is wrong... because when that song plays (with one exception), it's exactly what you're meant to feel. I could compare so much of this soundtrack but these are the two I've seen debated a fair bit in regards to original and remake. The point I want to make is the new OST slaps majorly and even if tracks are noticeably different SOUNDING, they still carry the same FEELING which is what is the most important part to me. There's not a song in this game I can say is outright bad to be fairly honest.

On the subject of sound, the voice acting is top-tier shit right here. I had a pang of worry when it was revealed that the remake would feature voice acted characters, really just because I'm all "Myyy precioussss!" in regards to this game so of course something as big as that is gonna make me a bit worried in regards to the execution. But I legitimately only have one complaint with the voices and it's not even in regards to the actual acting, because dear goddess they absolutely knocked it out of the park on all fronts here. Even little NPCs have life behind them with VAs that sound like they actually gave a fuck about the role rather than just wanting a paycheck, but the main cast is truly something else. Each period has been perfectly captured in visuals and music... and the voice acting too, because they actually bothered to hire people for their voices and not their fame. And so many of them do excellent jobs, I have to wonder why so many of them are new VAs with little (or sometimes zero) other projects to their name. Seriously, what the FUCK. They all do 10/10 jobs, give them more work! But as for my complaint, it's a little aspect in the script; naming your characters. A quirk in the original since basically every RPG at the time let you name your party members, and it didn't really matter because it was all text-based story (or image-based if you want to be a pedant for prehistory). Now that the game is voice-acted though, they chose to keep the naming ability... and I'm not a huge fan of that. This game thrives on the characters and story so having the protagonists never have their names said actually pains me. However the voiced lines where a character's name is meant to be said still feel naturally spoken as they differed the script to suit it better for the VAs. I'm at least glad they did something like that rather than leave awkward long pauses or hanging on a word, but if given the choice? Fuck the character naming system, give them their defaults.

I've really only spoken big positives, so what about some negatives? I'm not biased enough to say "there ar none lmoaaa" but at the same time I struggle to think of major overarching flaws. Heed that underlined word. If you go into specific chapters then yes, there are certainly flawed moments; that one boss fight in Near Future will never not be annoying despite having an easy as shit cheese method which just makes the encounter pointless anyways, Prehistory has a lot of "go in and out of this room multiple times" in its beginning segments, Distant Future's lack of combat until the very end is apparently a turn-off for many but I personally don't mind it, Present Day's lack of exploration is likewise a turn-off I can understand despite not minding myself (especially given that's the point of the chapter)... just flaws in individual chapters that don't really affect the whole of the game. This is a big reason why I'm giving the game such high praise too, because yeah I have moments I'm not very excited to see again on replay but those bits are very few and far between. The whole of this game, considering everything it has to offer, has surprisingly few flaws. Honestly, even when I first played the remake last year- at which point I hadn't played the SNES version since about 2018/2019, hard to recall exactly -I felt this same way. I thought for sure I would've had more negatives to comment on, but apparently not? I'm actually kinda mad most of the "negatives" section has been me saying I wish I had more negatives to actually mention. Fuck. If anything this remake has LESS issues than the original, which is a brilliant thing but... damn it I hate not having much to say.

If you really couldn't tell by now I still adore this game and always will. It's been a huge inspiration for me, ever since I first played it as a dumb 13 year old something or other. But it's amazing that it still captures all the same feelings this many years later. I love this game through and through, sourspots and all. It truly has earned its place as my second-favourite of all time. It's tragic to me that these days it's mostly known as "uhhhh the gaem that inspire undertal!!" when it deserves to stand by itself, as something truly unique and incredible. With the remake soon coming to PlayStation and Steam, I hope to see the reach this game has expand even further so that more people can experience this beautiful gem.

For all intents and purposes, this is a good ROM hack. The added music tracks (all maybe two of them) are good and suit the official soundtrack well, the tileset is changed for the better to a generally good quality, and the new battle backgrounds look incredible for the GBA. The actual fighter sprites range from good quality to whatever the hell they did with Turles, but it overall evens out with the rest of the presentation. So if this hack is good, why is it rated so low here? Well... the balancing is not only a bit out of whack with both the stripped down typing system and level curve due to story events being shuffled around, but the gameplay design of the fighters boil down to "really strong" or "don't bother". In particular, Nappa and Turles are basically low power clones of one another because they're meant to evolve into Oozaru. I think some slight differences would've at least made it more worthwhile picking one or the other though, even if it was just some differing level-up moves that can be transferred up on evolution. Water users are also seemingly limited to just Aqua which sort of strongholds you a bit if you want better type coverage, although I never actually found out because of the issue that made me shelf this game; trying to teach Strength softlocked the game. I lost two hours of progress from that and it sucked badly, something like that really does kill my motivation to play the game. Maybe it's the version I was playing or maybe it's because Oozaru was learning it... I haven't a clue. But it feels like the kind of bug that is impossible to miss, surely.

I'll likely be returning to this one in the future. But for now, I'm putting it to the side after those frustrations cropping up in a row. This is a really fun classic-style hack for fans of Dragon Ball and I do want to finish it. Give it a try if both aspects appeal to you, but be aware of that Strength issue and potential balancing woes.

I, uh, finished this some time in April and just sorta forgot to log it I suppose. Ironically, something I think sums-up X/Y pretty well; overall skippable.

Now don't get me wrong, the games are well-made and function as they should. The graphics are great for the 3DS standards, the soundtrack is a bop, and the number of Pokemon available gives you a lot of potential teambuilding options. But just about everything else does not hold up... the story has interesting moments and lots of cool ideas (a fucking war happened and we're just not gonna talk about it for more than two cutscenes?) but is overall a huge nothingburger. It somehow feels both rushed and yet sluggishly paced at the same time, with events just sorta happening because... because. But hey, story is rarely (if ever) the main draw for a Pokemon game! So how about the gameplay? Shockingly enough, it's Pokemon. Big surprise I'm sure. But with all the species available to catch, there must be a lot of ways to build your team and be challenged by the game, right? ...right?

...the game is balanced about as well as a dysfunctional wooden beam in the middle of a hurricane; it's not very balanced. Whilst on paper the sheer variety of Pokemon you can use is great, you're given so many gift Pokemon that it won't matter to much of the casual audience. But even for someone like me who caught a number of Pokemon for my team, even rotating some out, the game's difficulty is a joke. I had overlapping weaknesses to a good number of types, no mega evolutions, my fastest Pokemon was a Tyrantrum (base 71 speed btw), was using limited battle items, and I went into the league with an underleveled team... the only battle I really struggled with was Drasna, more specifically her Dragalge. Not just in the league but for the whole game. This was the one time I felt like I was actually at a proper disadvantage, and even then I did it to myself by not accounting for poison-types too well. But my point is the game's balance is shit; the first battle against Lysandre, the BIG BAD EVIL MAN who is BIG and EVIL and WANTS DESTRUCTION gives him two NFE Pokemon. Murkrow is good enough unevolved, fair enough, but Meinfoo? In the endgame portion? Actually laughable. And it's not even consistent given the second battle with him barely twenty minutes later has both of those Pokemon evolved.

The difficulty is made even more pathetic by the introduction of megas. These behemoths either snap the game in two or are worth ignoring. Lucky for players, the game hands out broken megas like candy which does include one of the best ones; Mega Lucario. This stupid thing is already really strong in competitive, but in casual the game just becomes an absolute cakewalk unless you do stupid shit like try to hit ghosts with fighting moves. Mega Lucario shows my general issue with the design of mega evolutions as they were implemented; making already strong Pokemon batshit broken. Fuck, I love Tyranitar but even it isn't safe from this syndrome. Yes there are still other powerful megas such as Mawile and Lopunny but these Pokemon were aching for anything good for the longest time. Kangaskhan is the queen of this trope in fact, going from a decent Pokemon to batshit broken because of mega evolution. But these broken megas are the ones you only really hear about... because the rest of them are just sad. I don't know why we live in a world where someone approved mega Lucario, mega Sableye, and mega Kanga yet also decided mega Ampharos having 55 speed just wasn't allowed. Or mega Abomasnow being a slow fat fuck whilst still keeping its dogshit defensive typing... you get the picture. Megas are a cool idea, but very heavily flawed as it comes down to picking the ones that break the game in two whilst the rest of them sit crying in a corner.

So, I've been complaining for a lot of this review. Yet I did honestly still enjoy this game for what it's worth; it's the most standard Pokemon adventure you can get with lots of creatures to catch, battles to be had (however easy they may be), and a story-ish of some description in there to keep you moving forward. There's no doubt that this game did a lot of good for the franchise with it's re-balancing of certain moves and mechanics, making competitive training easier as well. There are good steps here... but the whole of this game is merely fine. It was a start to bringing Pokemon to the new generation, and a good start at that. But replaying it with a critical eye (as well as experiencing Gen.7/8/9 which all built on it so much) I can see how mediocre and flawed it is. It's a great point for newcomers to the series to start, because in spite of being flawed it isn't genuinely broken like OG Red/Blue are. It's just a decently enjoyable game with a lack of substance for veterans or returning players.

OK. This is epic.

As a fan of the roguelike genre, this one was a pleasant surprise to come across (thanks HoodlumCallum) and is just as pleasant to experience. Not that it matters much but for the record I chose to port this hack onto my 3DS as a custom install Virtual Console inject, rather than playing it on an emulator. But without further ado... Emerald Rogue. This hack is excellent, let's get that out of the way right now. Not only is it excellent but it's genuinely a top-tier Pokemon hack; with how it blends the original gameplay systems and quirks of Pokemon with roguelike elements so seamlessly is honestly surprising. I wasn't expecting a bad hack by any means, but the quality is far above and beyond what I had envisioned prior to playing. The way the format is streamlined helps a lot too with the game being an easy pick-up and play on the go, you're easily able to hop in and do a couple routes and then come back to your current run later on. Experiencing routes in bigger bursts of playtime is of course a ton of fun, but it's good to have the option of taking breaks mid-run at all as it doesn't gatekeep the gameplay to just the toughest-of-tough players and makes the genre very accessible. Not every hack has to be accessible, but when you're making dramatic changes to core systems like this I feel it's a very appreciated touch. I may also have a bit of bias as the 3DS has limited charge, heh...

Adding to the accessibility is the sheer amount of options given to you when going into new runs. Modifying the quantity of items you'll find, whether or not all your Pokemon gain EXP., the chance of encountering powerful legendary Pokemon, how strong enemy teams are and their competence in using said teams, a number of challenge 'curse' options... and this is just out of the box! When you complete a run for the first time, you gain access to a ton of extra goodies to mess around with: The Pokedex expanding from the first three generations to the first EIGHT, with options to also play by pre-set regional Pokedexes instead if you prefer. The variety of boss trainers also expands to encompass those beyond the Hoenn games, throwing iconic Kanto and Johto bosses to the mix. But if you don't like these guys or just want a different roster to come up against, you can also toggle which regional bosses appear too! You can also enable Megas and/or Z-Moves at this point too, adding to teambuilding options for you and the AI opponents. There's so much potential variety here, and that's without going into side-quest content and the ever-expanding hub world that comes with it... this game is just jam-packed with content and variance on such a simple premise, it's NUTS and I absolute love it. Just about the only thing can't be changed is the permadeath mechanic, but for the format this game is presented in? The permadeath is perfect. Genuinely, one of the best additions this hack could've made. I'm a Fire Emblem fan so I'm no stranger to loving some good permadeath implementation and this game does it in such an excellent and natural way that encourages variety in team-building, especially pushing you to use Pokemon you might not have wanted to or considered before simply because it's all you can get your hands on. It adds a lot of sentiment to the temporary teams too, I've certainly had moments of screaming "NO" when losing a Pokemon I got attached to...

Alas. I have some problems here. Some of the regional Pokedex options seem a little borked in what they give the AI trainers, which I especially noticed with the Galar regional option; there are 400 Pokemon in that Pokedex but a lot of encounters were samey, both with wilds and trainers. There were two consecutive boss battles with Dhelmise in the enemy party for example... I suppose this is inevitable when you have a lot of game to fill and only so many logical places things can go. But also I can walk around in grass and find Magikarp so I don't know what to expect anymore. On a similar note I also wish we could individually toggle generations of Pokemon we want to have appear; as it is, you can select a limit for what gens appear... if that makes sense. To give an example: You can make it so Gen.1 through Gen.5 Pokemon will appear, but you wouldn't be able to add only Gen.8 Pokemon to that mix and would have to make EVERY Pokemon from Gen.1 to Gen.8 available all at once. It's a simple change, I'm sure, and one that would add even more variety to this already very spicy trail-mix of a video game. I'd absolutely adore this as a feature and hope it gets added at some point!

I do have one other flaw, and it's most likely just me being slightly nitpicky. Slight spoilers but after the champion battle, the game isn't over and you instead get a final route to complete along with a true final boss fight at the end. Now, this sounds awesome, and admittedly I liked it a lot on my second run... but on my first? It felt like a slap to the face. Maybe I'm the stupid one as I decided to sell a lot of items before the "final" battle to buy more shit for my team, only to lose a Pokemon and be left unable to replace them with one last team member since I sold all my Pokeballs at the prior rest stop. With no way to buy more because the randomly genned route only put rest stops after all the encounters... I still managed the true final boss perfectly well with only five team members, but hopefully some of you kind of get what I mean. The addition of a true final boss is exciting and fun; on my subsequent run I loved it a lot! But for that first time you're lead into believing that there's no more game after the champion fight, except yes there is. Maybe I'm just salty I sold all my "useless junk", I don't know. Maybe this isn't a problem with the game but a problem with me. Who knows... but it's my review and so I'm pointing it out anyways.

On the whole, this game is brilliant. It's excellent. Top-notch Pokemon ROM hacking. I've only completed two runs thus far (my initial run and one with the updated Pokemon roster) but attempted many more, which I feel gives me enough playtime to justify making a review now. In spite of this though I'm absolutely going to keep playing for a lot longer, this game has me by my nonexistent balls and won't let go. A very high recommendation if you love Pokemon, roguelikes, or both! It's a great slice of something different that can be accessed by everyone thanks to the options you can mess around with. Top-three ROM hack for me.

Despite going in knowing this game has had a reputation in the past, I wanted to give it a genuine go. A fair shake, form my own opinions... EV training is something I usually quite enjoy, and I did partake in my fair share of competitive Pokemon from the Black/White era up until the end of the Sun/Moon era. The premise for this hack honestly seemed really promising to me as a result! And what I got was a technically good game... that is generally unenjoyable to play through. Unfortunately so, because I really liked the opening to this game and the first gym battle provided a good taste of what should've followed.

The balancing for this game is all over the place. On the one hand you get a lot of resources off the bat- too much all at once I would argue -but on the other hand you're left starved of resources that the enemy gets access to WAY before you can. As early as the third gym you will be fighting mega evolutions fairly consistently, with even your rival and AI partner getting access to megas before you can. When DO you get megas though? After Sabrina. Alright... so for most of the early game and part of the mid game you're fighting a generally uphill battle; keep in mind, uphill. Not impossible. Not even always unfair. But a lot of the time it comes down to finding a specific Pokemon to counter the boss, which by itself isn't a bad idea. However: The game boasts custom balancing, from changing existing Pokemon to adding custom moves and even entirely new forms. Though it's not impossible to work with these, often times the specific solutions to boss fights are using Pokemon that weren't even changed and/or were already really good in the real competitive scene. In a nutshell, it feels like you should "get meta" or really just suffer because of it.

The balancing overall feels out of wack. I felt this most with Lavender Town: The boss fight against Marowak is a Level 58 WITH ADDED STAT BOOSTS and coverage moves whilst your level cap is 56... and then directly after that you're fighting Level 42-ish Pokemon with moves like Scary Face. Boss encounters should obviously be a noticeable challenge but a difference this huge in the same area (one room apart no less) is absolutely nuts. Honestly the Silph Co tower made this feel a bit evident too, with how there are three consecutive boss fights (in all fairness you get a free heal and have easy access to a full team heal as well); one being your rival, which is fairly well balanced and decently enjoyable. The second being a tag fight against Archer and Ariana, which is where the mega evolution starvation was especially felt... on top of the AI partner really being set up to fail, from having a lead Pokemon that instantly buffs the opposing Gothitelle to being given a Mega Sceptile that is stuck with Mega Drain and Dragonbreath. Keeping in mind the enemies at this point have long had access to competitive strategies and proper moves... including the third Silph Co. boss, Giovanni. In his first encounter he already had a Mega Kangaskhan. He still has that here, fair enough, but he also just gets to have a competitive-grade Garchomp because why wouldn't he. It's a shame because he does have a fairly interesting lead with Hippowdon, only to then devolve into the average OU team.

Really, I feel like a lot of my bitching is...well, bitching. But when they go out of their way to stop you from getting access to competitive items early, as well as making you deal with 30+ experience levels of mega evolutions before you can feel like you're on a level playing field, I would say the janky balancing is fair play to be critiqued. To put it another way, there was rarely a moment where I felt satisfied in my eventual victories... it was more commonly the feeling of "Fucking finally" which isn't a good thing to make the player feel in place of actual satisfaction. I don't mind swapping team members around and using multiple Pokemon, in fact it's something I love to do. But when just about every boss trainer invalidates at least one of the Pokemon you really want to use it's not a fun feeling; it rarely felt like my own fault for having a badly built team, it was more or less the game punishing me for wanting to try out the new toys it's given me. The feeling doesn't get much better as the game goes on, but I wanted to at least get to the elite four before calling it quits. Thankfully I did at least have the will to go on and finish it, but not the post-game...

...but I did nearly run through the game a second time. Yes, seriously, for real, I put myself through it one and a half times. The first playthrough I did on vanilla settings, but for my attempted second run I tried mininal grinding mode since it piqued my interest. Unfortunately, my feelings remained mostly the same. The only real difference is how it cuts down training and catching, because even with an easier bar for entry (no EVs + perfect IVs for everyone) and knowing what fights had what Pokemon? It was really much of the same experience. A fun taste at the beginning that quickly devolves into a hellish uphill battle, which becomes a largely mediocre experience after finally getting the tools your opponents have been using for most of the game. For what it's worth the champion battle felt like a satisfying enough end, although truth be told I don't know how much of that was me being happy to be done with the game.

All I've done so far is complain, but what about positives? Well. The Pokemon buffs do make the game fairly interesting and were a main draw for me... my main issue there is just how a number of Pokemon are still relatively useless despite getting really fun anf exciting changes. Likewise, when the enemy teams aren't your average Smogon tryhard they can be fairly creative. If anything that makes me hate the difficulty discrepancy more though! The devs clearly know how to make an interesting battle yet most of the time opt to just look at what's hot in OU or Ubers and make a team revolving around that. The presentation is good... yeah, that's a positive I don't really think has a drawback to it. At first I would've said the Pokemon availability to be a positive, but the game is so chock-full of encounters to shove in that it was borderline unplayable without inputting an in-game cheat that opens the DexNav without needing to go through random encounters first. Not to mention just how many of these Pokemon have a consistent usage (or even a niche usage) is heavily up for debate, considering every potential option is up against options that also outclass them. It makes for what I think is a pretty redundant meta, even as a singleplayer experience.

People have already torn the unfun enemy AI to shreds by now and I think that plays into the unfun feeling; you can't have a counter in your pocket because the AI just fucking knows about it before you get a chance to use it. The battle that, retrospectively, was the beginning of this game's downfall exemplifies this; the rocket grunt after Nugget Bridge. I lead a Flaaffy with Power Gem, unintentionally giving me a coverage option against his Growlithe. But suspiciously enough the AI swaps out it out before I've shown that I have the move... hhmmmmm... so, you end up playing hot potato with your switches because the AI has help from Jesus, apparently. Also this grunt has a competitive Gabite, because fuck you. As I said earlier in this ramble of a review; it's not impossible, it's just unfun to deal with. Even when I knew it was coming. That's not a good thing. I shouldn't have to say that it's not a good thing. But apparently all-knowing AI is a good thing in someone's eyes...

When this game is fun, it honestly is fun. But when this game drags, you absolutely feel the drag. And unfortunately for every step forward this game takes, it takes a few steps back and ends up as a horrendously mixed bag of trail mix that is technically well made at the core but has so much going against it at the same time. I wish this game were fun because the core of it all is an interesting prospect. There's genuine challenge and difficult, but then there's what they did here...

Apparently the devs use their Discord to mock people who don't like the game? So in the off-chance they read this: You've got great ideas going here, and kudos for wanting to make a more challenging Pokemon game. But this is not how it should be done. The difficulty ramps way too fast and starves you of resources as a way of making you feel underpowered by comparison. I don't hate this hack, I had fun moments with it to the point I decided to seek out shinies for some of my final team members (Lopunny and Flareon if you're curious) but there is just too much of that "Thank fuck that's over" feeling to make the entire game a satisfying experience.

Maybe I'll check the postgame out at some point, or maybe I'll just finish my minimal grind run. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm done with this game unless a major overhaul happens.

Boy, oh boy, oh boy... this one was a trip. When I first discovered this game many, many years ago I was absolutely in love with it. It was one of the first Pokemon RPG Maker fangames I played, with the other being Fusion Generation of all things. At the time though I vastly preferred this game and would spend a lot more time with it, playing religiously and even dabbling in customized sprites for my player (however shitty they were, it was still cool to me). Patiently waiting for updates to come along to add more to the story, to add more content, to expand on what I was loving so much at the time... nowadays? ...yeesh I really was having a phase back then, what the hell. Either a strong 'angsty' phase or I was just enamored at the scope of the fanmade project, what with it being one of the first fanmade Pokemon games I played that wasn't a ROM hack and thus giving it a lot more room to flourish (I know ROM hacks have come a massive way since then but at the time they were quite limited despite still showing plenty of promise).

Look, I'll get this out of the way now: I don't think this game is bad on the whole. But I definitely think the positives that tend to stick with people a lot more, and that's wholly understandable because the custom content on offer here is quite frankly incredible. Bringing a TCG-only concept in Deltas to a video game form with a high number of uniquely sprited creature forms is the main selling point people will pass around with this game, and that's probably because it's something this game does do fantastically. The Deltas are handled pretty much perfectly with their unique typings and designs complimenting them incredibly well, as well as their new moves and abilities providing new leases of life for them. In addition, some Pokemon get multiple Delta variants which gives you a TON of potential options to run if you want to use a team of just these new forms. Unfortunately I feel the Delta forms suffer from a problem similar to many main series regional variants; lack of base-stat changes. Despite types, moves, and abilities making up a lot of what makes a Pokemon function it is ultimately the base stats that gives them their niches. And some of these typings do not go well with the rest of a Pokemon's kit, and can even contrast the lore given. Delta Dodrio, for example, is apparently potent and mental manipulation with its psychic abilities... and is forced into being a physical attacker because that's what OG Dodrio's stat spread leans into. Metagross has two Delta forms but they're sharing the exactly same base stat spread, except for one of them which gets a new alternate Mega form with its own stats. But that still, in my opinion, limits what you can do with it. What hurts most though is how Pokemon who previous had lackluster stats still have lackluster stats in their Delta forms, and this would be fine and dandy if this were the kind of game where you can run what you want reliably enough. But unless you play on easy, which strips this game of balancing merits given it just emulates the official games, these Pokemon will still remain as unfortunate collection-only creatures. It really, really sucks because a good amount of Deltas do function well. But then there are ones who really missed out because of the devs refusing to give them differing stats, I mean shit the whole point is that they mutated which would've been the perfect chance to give them even slight stat changes. This is on the same level as many Paradox Pokemon not getting meaningful stat changes (Iron Thorns...) and- as mentioned -many canon regional forms having barely if any stat changes to suit their new niches. Again, I want to stress a good amount of the Deltas do work and work well, but with how many there are there's undoubtedly plenty that just got left behind due to refusal to let them be improved.

Since I brought it up, may as well mention... the difficulty. It honestly isn't too bad to begin with. It feels reasonable enough at first, with the 1st gym even being pushed back a bit to adjust for the level curve. And then the 2nd gym leader has a Mega Beedrill, which is really an omen of things to come. Legendries worm their way into gym leader teams pre-postgame too... except this is a privilege even the Elite Four do not get. Even on hard mode, the Elite Four do not get legendary Pokemon, despite two of the later gym leaders having them on both normal and EASY. Now, admittedly, this isn't a Radical Red situation where the game felt fun at first and gradually steamed my kettle until I fucking hated every major fight; the difficulty spikes and dips as frequently as my bipolar self does. But this itself feels like a bit of a problem... when you go from "wow, what the fuck" to "wow, that was kinda fun" so frequently I'm just left confused? I played on normal difficulty for the record. It felt like a decently good challenge for much of the game but incidents like a 2nd gym Mega Beedrill and random-ass Cresselia in a gym battle are not a pleasant surprise. The fact that things weeble-wobble so much with the difficulty, though, is not a lot of fun.

To give points to the balancing, however, is that legendary Pokemon are typically reserved for boss fights. And given the whole thing of this game is people praising these things like the gods they arguably really are, it makes sense that you'd come across them for big encounters. In that regard I don't mind the use of legendary Pokemon. You can also actually see it coming and have ample time to prepare as a result, not to mention they aren't typically given the strongest stats/moves until later on into the game. It doesn't expect the world of you right away... all the time, anyways. As mentioned there are still a number of stupid battles in here and the constantly shifting difficulty makes the whole thing feel off. Still, credit where credit is due, they didn't do a Radical Red for most of the game.

But this game is also touted as a pinnacle of Pokemon fangame writing! It's very story-heavy after all and intends on making the most of the potential for mature themes. So, what is this supposed cornerstone of Pokemon fanfics like? ...needlessly edgy. OK I know that's an easy way to describe it but can you blame me? Considering, though, that they already had a non-edgy story toggle which had to be reworked BECAUSE the non-edgy story made less sense than the intended edgier one, I would say it's a valid point to bring up. Honestly, I don't have issues with the ideas here; people praising legendary Pokemon like a cult is a very real and very interesting idea. Considering the in-universe lore these powerful creatures are given, it's not unreasonable to think that there would be nutjobs out there that praise them and commit heinous acts in their name and the like. But it's the actual execution I'm not a big fan of. Insurgence has a pretty good setup that is quickly exchanged for edge points in the mere opening hours of the game... I understand something like a sacrifice isn't going to be squeaky-clean, exactly, but showing us this off the bat doesn't do much. The opening is already really good with given backstory and having your character needing to escape a cult's clutches after getting your memories drained, that alone is a strong opener that sets-up the antagonists well. Having ooo aaa bloody sacrifice isn't doing much else at this point in the game but making you realize how old this game is, like if it'd come later down the line when the cult is desperate? That'd still be a bit edgy, sure, but it wouldn't come off quite as forceful. Having a character call things 'edgy' honestly didn't help matters much either, given being self-aware whilst still continuing to do the thing you are calling out is fucking stupid. But most people have by now called this game's plot out on the edge, so I'll leave it alone. Because frankly being edgy isn't the story's only problem. Plot points tend to get overlooked and eventually resolved with really poor conclusions, because there is too much shit going on. Genuinely at times this feels like a Dungeon Master's first module that was heavily inspired by their anime binge (an infamously awful "I'm chaotic good" line in the game is not helping to change my mind on this) because so little of this feels satisfyingly coherent... or coherent, period. There's just so many cults to follow along with, each with multiple unique individuals that have to get screentime; said cults also have their own ideals and personal plots that we need to be informed about and follow to a degree; there's a character set-up to be a major player with an honestly interesting concept behind him that gets IGNORED until it's way too late; two rival characters that add fuck-all to the game despite one having relations to one of the cults (how they messed that up, I don't know); one of the characters we see from the start of the game doesn't do shit to try and actually present a roadblock to the player until the end of the game; there's a whole otherworldly escapade with Giratina wackos and an anime-esque boss fight; an antagonist who's meant to be sympathetic yet ends up being anything but that... there's so much junk going on and you're never given a singular goal to strive towards until the game outright tells you who the main bad guy is supposed to be and then you beat them and don't feel very satisfied because it's over about as quick as it was introduced. What the fucking shit are people smoking to say this is the best story a Pokemon fangame has and why in the hell did I used to agree with those potheads? It's a mess, it's such a massive mess. The only salvations come in select cool/interesting moments and the unintentionally funny dialogue. But as an entirety, this plot blows chunks. The edginess is honestly such a minor issue by comparison, because the edgy content exists within this massive lump of confused contrivances and threads that jump around like a frog on crack. If it were a GOOD story with edgy content that'd be one thing... but this is an incoherent story with edgy content, and as such the core of the plot is broken. It is not good, it can barely be called decent at best and that's if you're generous.

Characters do not get proper time to develop, 90% of the plot threads go basically nowhere and those that do have lame resolutions when they eventually wrap-up: The story wants to do so many things at once whilst boasting a darker tint on the Pokemon world. But because it's such a mess of wet egg noodles, the story isn't given the breathing room to develop and properly embrace the themes it sets-up; that's why is goes from 'dark yet serious' to 'ow the edge' so quickly. It is much too concerned with packing as many cool ideas into it as possible rather than creating something truly impactful and memorable, hence the comparison to DM's first D&D module earlier. Ugh... love how I wanted to keep the "lmao edgy" point alone but ended up having to bring it back to make my argument. This plot isn't unsalvageable, at least not at its concept. In it's current form, though, it would need so many changes and rewrites to make it good- nevermind excellent -that you'd be better off just making it again from the ground-up.

So... the story is total ass, the difficulty is as inconsistent as my emotional state, and the soundtrack mixes genuinely great original compositions with RPG maker defaults. What does this game have going for it, especially since I'm not giving it lower than 3-stars? The gameplay. Yes, I fucking know, I rambled about the bipolar battle difficulties, but hear me out here. The core gameplay is Pokemon... big surprise I know, but Pokemon is fun. Really fun. And this game presents you with plenty of options to build your team and take on the world around you, along with many really well-constructed locations to explore and side-quests to complete in which to get some rarer Delta species. It rewards you for going out of your way to get more involved with the world, it feels genuinely satisfying to build-up a team and see what side content will bring to the table. Whilst in a way there is a similar level of content overload akin to Radical Red here, I feel it's generally spread out enough to not feel overwhelming. There are a ton of Deltas, new Megas, armored forms, even a couple exclusive legendary Pokemon included just for this game. But it's introduced gradually enough to not feel like you're getting pushed into the deep end after a couple hours of gameplay, this despite an early bad omen in 2nd gym Mega motherfucking Beedrill. The actual GAMEPLAY of the GAME is a lot of fun and is what kept me going on this playthrough, even with the now constantly mentioned wobbly difficulty curving/spiking feeling like a sledgehammer to the face at times. But unlike Radical Red where I just wanted it to be over, I kept going because it was more fun than frustrating. The bullshit is still bullshit at the end of the day, though, and I wouldn't blame anyone for being turned away by it. Because at points I was thinking of dropping the game early... yet, again; you get so many options and get rewarded for seeking out these options that you're never really railroaded into needing a specific answer to every solution. There are times where it may feel like that and I imagine hard difficulty might make that more apparent, but for the default difficulty setting you can honestly get by mostly fine. Just don't let the bipolar difficulty spikes turn you away, because when those bags of tricks are shown off it tends to become pretty simple in overcoming them shortly afterwards.

Man oh man, this was a ride and a half... I'll be amazed if anyone reads all this, and I'll be even more amazed if anyone reads all this whilst agreeing with me. Especially in regards to my story critiques. But all-in-all, this game is a mediocre mess. It's what people exaggerate Kingdom Hearts to be like, except it actually exists. The shitty story only really exists to give you excuses to visit more and more locations with tons of stuff to do, and that doesn't excuse the piss-poor plot... but whilst not giving a shit about said plot, the fun of the gameplay loop becomes very apparent and really is what kept me going through this one. I seriously can't imagine what younger me was thinking in agreeing with the people calling this game the best Pokemon fangame, but I wouldn't blame anyone coming here just to play around with the number of new options given to you. What an incredible disaster.

The 5-stars on this one is very genuine. No meme, no joke, no bullshit: I fully believe this game deserves the rating. Not only is it what I now consider to be my favourite Pokemon fangame, but also what I would say is the BEST Pokemon fangame. This game is honestly peak ROM hacking which I didn't expect from what is at the offset, and at it's core, a silly cringe-worthy 4Chan homage. But the word homage rings very true here, because despite mocking Pokemon itself and those who take it too seriously this is an honest love-letter to fans of the series with many a community reference and wonderfully balanced gameplay that provides a tough but fair challenge which reasonably scales along the journey.

But this game has a reputation which I cannot just ignore here, can I? As already mentioned, Pokemon Clover is a homage to 4Chan and was made by numerous anons from the /vp/ board across years of collective work. Starting life as a simple FireRed edit the game has developed over it's nearly 10 year lifecycle to become what it is today; I can't admit to having played any of these older versions of the game but I was aware of it for most of it's developmental lifespan. I never thought a whole lot of it back then as I had mainly come to know it as "the ROM made by a bunch of fans at once" which alone was a cool concept... but I guess I just never looked into it much more than that. A bit of a shame, but better late than never with this one.

Of course the one thing most people will bring up with this game is the 4Chan aspect, which is very well reflected in the game's tone. Both the creature designs and the humour of the game world. To start with the former, I understand that there are absolutely offensive designs here with many of their basis being abnormal, memes, itself offensive, or in-jokes. However, unlike most edgy/"offensive" ROM hacks I feel Clover does something incredibly well with the creature designs; making them work as actual Pokemon. Your typical edgy-era hack would just put in crudely draw genitals and nazi symbols as "creatures" and call it a day, but the Clover devs really ran with the concepts given and made creatures that- although obviously based on things that wouldn't be on the table for the official games -still look like believable Pokemon. I'm dead serious and I WILL die on this hill, because it's a very valid point. Yeah, names like Furnazi kinda spell out the reference for you but divorced from the name/basis it really does look like an official Pokemon; likewise for Finasoven, the thing it evolves into. Lizakbar and Vandash are perhaps too closely on-the-nose to be justifiably real but still work as creature designs despite that, rather than "let's put in an Osama Bin Laden PNG" or "let's draw blackface on an NPC sprite" which would've been the lazier and cheaper route to get shock factor in there. Then you get the unsubtle designs like Rainglock, Barbarkley, Motherfuck/Hofucno... and especially Kuklux/Kuklan. But dare I say these few unsubtle designs being the exception make them work? ...let me explain; the game builds itself up as having Pokemon based on various edgy/offensive/random concepts, only to then chuck out something like Motherfuck or Kuklux at you out of nowhere. The sudden appearance of these very blatant designs is what makes them humorous, offensive or otherwise. There are then Pokemon designs that aren't even offensive at all and are just genuinely cool ideas for creatures with amazing spritework to bring them to life: The Clovermon selection is a brilliant spread of cringy, offensive, straight-up cool, and everything in-between. It's absolutely wonderful and I loved discovering it throughout my playtime.

For the writing/game world, yeah. What the hell else would you expect from a game like this... basically nothing is off-the-table: If you exist, no doubt some part of your existence is going to be made fun of in this game. And here's the thing, here's my spicy hot-take. I don't mind it; I don't think it's as offensive as people make out; I don't think it existing is wrong, either. Yeah there absolutely are very dated and unfunny lines in this game, I cannot and won't deny that. The second city is a 'feminazi' dig after all, something that hasn't been relevant in years. But it's important to consider the timeline of this game's development, as well as how everyone gets made fun of here. I will emphasize again: EVERYONE gets made fun of here. There are lines of text that insult the game itself, for fuck's sake. I am part of one of the marginalized groups that is mocked in this game and yet I didn't take offense to it despite having received legit harassment before (face-to-face, in the real world, not someone sending petty online messages). Not all of it made me laugh, but there were points where it got me either because it was unexpected or because despite the over exaggerations it felt relatable in a sense. And that's something I think is important, being able to laugh at yourself. If this game was all "haha n-word" and saying gay people should die or whatever, yeah it'd absolutely cross the line from funny to plain offensive. This game not only makes fun of literally everyone, not only exaggerates things to an often unreal degree, but lampshades itself constantly. The neo-nazis for example are portrayed as being right because that's how they see themselves, yet are given trainer names that insult them for being obviously in the wrong. The merchants (no prize for guessing what these are reskinned to be) are constantly around tinfoil-hat NPCs who spout total bull pretty much every point in the game. The gym leader who is literally a nazi gets to have a spot of development by showing how his beliefs came from his bad upbringing and how he's considering a change for the obviously better. The overall writing in this game isn't top-tier or anything, but to write it all off as just being pointlessly offensive isn't exactly correct either. It's edgy, it's shameless, it takes no prisoners; Clover does make fun of people, absolutely. But it does more than just yell slurs at minorities. It goes after everyone, including itself, the people who made it, the people who are playing it, with hyperbolic humour. Whether or not this humour is for you is another question, and if it's not? More power to you. The game does warn you upfront though that the game is going to be edgy/offensive, if Googling it alone somehow didn't give you an idea of what to expect. It's not like it's tricking you into playing an offensive game.

So far all I've really done is defend what I see being the most attacked parts of the game. And honestly I will die on these hills, the game is obviously offensive but it's not promoting an agenda. Whether or not some of the hundreds of anonymous contributors held any kind of beliefs is not for us to know, but a few rotten eggs in this case wouldn't (or shouldn't) taint the entire product. Because it's quite obvious to me that the intent isn't to spread actual hatred; if anyone played this game and had their own sick thoughts "justified" from that, then they would've already been looking for that approval from literally anywhere else. The fault lies on the individual, not the game openly mocking people who believe such things. I digress, though... the serious talk is all well and good. But this is a game, not a political debate. How does the game part of this game hold up?

...well it's Pokemon, big surprise. But with a whole roster of brand-new monsters it really does feel like stepping into a new official release, albeit with this thing most of the main games don't know; challenge. Pokemon Clover features a really great difficulty curve that although starting off as your standard Pokemon fare will gradually turn into making use of EV-trained teams with idealistic moves and items, whilst never once leaving you feeling like you're lagging behind. The game especially takes advantage of this by having its first half not require any serious EV-training of your own, whilst heavily encouraging it in the second half. At the same time however the game makes training-up a competitive grade team incredibly easy very early into this portion of the game, with it being theoretically doable even before then if you're determined enough to max-out a certain Pokemon earlier on. Better still, this game is built around trial-and-error with you expected to lose most major fights at least once before acquiring a victory. Unlike most other difficulty ROM hacks, too, these eventual victories feel satisfying. Playing around with all the new Pokemon to find what works for specific matchups is incredibly fun, with training them up taking no time at all too it's easy to just pop on some background noise as you grind-up a new team member before setting back off into battle and see how your new crew matches-up. Most of this, for me, came during the first half of the game and primarily around the last three gym leaders who ended up exposing some bad type coverage in my team building. Yet all I did was try out a couple new members (two of whom ended up staying for the rest of this part of the game) and found success not long after, rather than being actually roadblocked for what felt like ages because the AI would cheat or have items/Pokemon obviously better than my own. The game actually tests you with engaging team designs, encouraging you to mess around with the options presented before you and using your brain for tactical play. It'll gradually ease you into the tougher battles whilst still giving a nice sprinkle of challenge earlier on without making you feel like you're losing due to bullshit, the game keeps you pretty much on-par with your opponents as much as it can.

For me the best part of this game's difficulty was felt in the second half of it all, where despite things being generally tougher than the first half of the game? I managed to pretty consistently stick with just one team of six that I bred-up. I'd argue few of the Pokemon on said team could be considered exceptionally great, too, especially my water of choice (Substarr). Yet I still got through the game's harshest battles using the team I liked best, because the game wasn't throwing dick moves or unstoppable mountains at me. The game is engaging, satisfying, and rewarding: But most importantly, it's FUN. Pokemon Clover is one of the most fun monster-taming RPGs I've played and ranks up as perhaps the most fun Pokemon experience so far, really only challenged by the Gamecube titles and Emerald Rogue. This is not to dismiss the other mainline Pokemon entries, but as far as games which are instantly memorable for their challenges and how I loved overcoming them? Colo/XD, Emerald Rogue, and now Clover rank as the cream of the crop for me. Of these... I would say Clover is most likely my favourite, considering by the end of the game I had half a box full of backup team members from how many I loved using and swapping-around. This game put a ton of effort into making so many of the Pokemon interesting with not just their (sometimes questionable) designs, but their kits; the type combos, moves both custom and canon, and likewise for abilities. My first team consisted of about eight or nine members swapped in-and-out, with a number of others used for early-/mid-game progression before being replaced, and my second team being more or less a consistent new six Pokemon that I'd caught, bred, and trained-up. This, however, says nothing of the number of Pokemon I wish I could've used and still want to use in future runs of the game. There are so many interesting ones I considered using but eventually settled on a group I became properly attached to, it's a really great feeling and does end up being reminiscent of an official Pokemon experience in that regard. Just exploring this big new world full of unique monsters, finding which ones are your favourites. I can't say enough how fun this game is, because fuck me sideways it's absolutely top-tier stuff.

Graphically this game is absolutely incredible considering this is a fan-project and running on the GBA hardware. I have seen some of the past sprites and despite looking far more rough once upon a time, the version of the game I played had basically nonstop graphical euphoria. Seriously, this is one of the most authentic looking fangames that I've ever seen. The trainer sprites and Pokemon sprites both fit the GBA style to an absolute T with the artists making the absolute most of the GBA's limited sprite sizes whilst still making visually distinct sprites with plenty of life and detail. I of course think of the dabbing youngster sprite whilst typing this sentence out, but in all fairness it is perhaps the best dabbing youngster sprite I've seen. For real though this game is graphically amazing from the creatures, to the trainers, to the backgrounds, tilesets, move effects, dialogue portraits... not everything is 100% original of course but the majority of this stuff obviously is. It's wonderful to see how much care was given to what really could've been a crappily-drawn meme game and it adds so much charm to the experience that I simply cannot gush about it enough.

Story is where this game both did and didn't surprise me. Going in, I didn't really have any story expectations considering this is a 4Chan game. The main villains being a Reddit expy was comically expectant though and I do like how they manage to be stupid goofballs whilst also somehow managing actual impact on the game's events, showing a level of competence despite making Team Star look like actual villains. Coming to a head with a boss showdown that manages to build itself up as something bigger, then get resolved right after with the kind of humour expected at this point in the game. But what did surprise me? How they managed to make these reddit wannabes into something far, far more interesting and a legitimate threat by the second half of the game. Not only that but calling attention to how nonsensical their actions were and describing them as such; it's a great surprise that layers on actual intrigue, especially since until now this is an evil team whose highlights include trying to steal something open-source and housing two weak fodder grunts that randomly shout a gamer word before battle. The fact that the game could make this same villain team into an actual threatening force but an interesting villainous presence, with the elites of this group serving as some of the most challenging, interesting, and fun fights in the entire game. How these guys get their story concluded is really nice as well, having a real-stakes final fight that itself is another fun challenging yet fun battle with incredible music behind it all. Yet despite this, the game never truly loses it's roots as being a primarily funny experience. It has genuine moments for sure but the most of this game- including the post-defeat speech of the main antagonist -carries a humorous tone that is primarily consistent. It takes a little to fully get into gear, but when it gets going it feels like one big enjoyable ride. Whether or not you find it funny is another story; objectively, though, it keeps the tone up really well despite wanting to tell more of an actual story during the latter portions of the playtime.

The soundtrack... yes the soundtrack here was (as far as I know) primarily made by some of the guys behind SiIvaGunner so meme remixes are rampant, and for the GBA they fit really really well. They are remixed pretty much flawlessly for the console limitations, without bastardizing any of them (the first gym battle music- Darude Sandstorm -is a perfect example). All of this despite me not really caring for the SiIvaGunner project; I do genuinely enjoy and appreciate their contributions here though. Not only are the remixes great, but so SO many original tracks are earworm material with how well composed and catchy they are. Always suiting the situation they're used for, being great to hum along with if that's your thing too. Battle themes are especially notable for this, with the Shadow Council theme being one I've gone back to so frequently despite hearing it five times in one sitting. Something like that is how you know you've struck gold, having a player wanting to obsessively listen to your soundtrack after they've already been hearing it for ours on end. Full props to everyone who contributed their musical talents, because there are very few songs I didn't care for. So many songs got me hyped-up, a lot of sudden meme remixes got actual laughs out of me when they appeared, and my work playlist got a fuckton bigger because of this game. Give it a listen... or play the game to hear it all in context. Either works.

I already said it at the start of this lengthy behemoth of a review. But this game is overall fantastic, easily what I consider the best Pokemon fangame and currently my favourite one too. The big fuss with this game is surrounding the content within it, but after having it hyped up I really was left asking "Is that it?" because all-in-all it wasn't anything outstandingly offensive. Maybe my unfortunate real-world exposures have left my senses simply fucked, but I really can't think of anything that genuinely made me go "Damn that's gonna hurt someone". It's a Pokemon game with embarrassing humour and designs that range from awesome to Kuklan, this is the kind of thing where you just have to embrace it and realize- as said -it IS just a game at the end of the day. If you're getting legitimately angry or offended over a game that openly advertises itself as having lowbrow humour, then quite frankly I don't think you have the right priorities in life. Feel free to have your own opinion of course: You can dislike this game, I have no issues there. But disliking it and being hurt or offended by it are completely different things.

I love this game so, so much. Far more than I ever expected to; I went in thinking it'd be just an alright but fun game with some stanky humour, but got one of the best Pokemon experiences to date. It is so shameless that I can't help but laugh along with the funny moments, or cringe-up at the shameful/edgy moments. And I do feel like that was at least half of the intent on part of the team behind this monolithic project, considering the origins behind it and all. If you're a fan of Pokemon and can tolerate, ignore, or enjoy this kind of humour then I 100% recommend this game to you. This is an absolute gem of a game that deserves to be known as more than just "the offensive 4Chan game", because it has so clearly gone above and beyond that original premise to become something truly special. It is absolutely packed with content, and I completed it all. Pokemon Clover is such a special piece of work, such an amazing video game experience, that for the first time in years I was compelled to complete the Pokedex all the way. This game is a golden nugget, a crown jewel, an absolute diamond of fangames. And as my log dates show, I did sit on this review for a while because I had so much to say and so much to think on. Even retrospectively, this game really sticks out as something truly great in my mind.

Despite going the completionist route, I still didn't want to put this one down when I was finished with it. One more time now... I fucking loved this game. Will absolutely be replaying it again in future, for many years to come. Godspeed, Clover devs. Thanks for all your hard work.

This game sucks. Like, this game really sucks. Not, "this game is flawed but still good"... no. No, this game just actually sucks. It's so objectively bad that I was tempted to leave my review as a "fuck this game" and move on, but that wouldn't be fair considering everything else I've given a proper review to. So then, let's begin with this... this.

Pokemon Wack, is a video game. It sure is a game that you can download and play, and was made by some guys. But for real, Pokemon Wack is one of many RPG Maker 'Pokemon Essentials' fangames that sure does reinforce the stigma surrounding this engine. For the most part it makes use of modified Gen.3 assets on the overworld, with the official sprite rips used for Pokemon from Gen.1 through Gen.5 as standard for the Pokemon Essentials kit. Everything else falls into one of three categories; Microsoft Paint, stolen fan-art, or poorly ripped models/artwork. It's also worth mentioning that so many of the modified overworld sprites are incredibly imperfect, not following the sprite format at all and instead using the brush tool to add details... first noted (at least to memory) with the Team Wack grunts but it becomes incredibly persistent through the rest of the game not too long after. It gives a very amateur vibe and y'know what, for the part of the game where it first appears it works fine. I mean, this game is called Pokemon Wack after all! Surely it's meant to be funny-bad like this, hell the first gym leader lampshades how his specialty is weak to all three starter types! That's pretty funny, surely most of the game is like this!

...but unsubtle foreshadowing aside, yeah the game doesn't win any awards for graphic design. The Microsoft Paint sprites gradually wear down your sanity and the more I noticed the stolen sprites the more annoyed by them I got, and yes I do mean stolen because none of the original artists are credited. Unless I somehow blanked out on the part of the credits twice. The stolen sprites pose another core issue of this game but we've only talked graphics and whatnot so far, so how is the game?

Third time making this joke but unsurprisingly, this game plays like a Pokemon game. Except it feels like a Pokemon game where you're a young stupid child who doesn't know shit about types and moves and stats and items, because Pokemon Wack has 52 INDIVIDUAL TYPES and more than 100 new moves with thankfully nowhere near as many new abilities... though there's still too fucking many. This to say nothing of the absurd amount of items in the game, which also houses another issue in this game's design but we'll get there momentarily. So, I said a while back that Radical Red felt like a game with too much feature-creep. Well I should apologize to Radical Red because if I knew a game could be this fucking bad with feature-creep I would've further savored the time I had with that game. Well... OK, maybe I wouldn't go that far, but I think this point being made is obvious. Though this game prides itself on these features and they are fun in theory- as well as funny to meme about -it makes for a messy gameplay experience. Honestly. Look at this fucking type chart and tell me it's OK.
https://i.imgur.com/i9c2X4y.jpeg
Better yet, consider the following. Official Pokemon already has over 100 possible type combinations, with a handful of those being unique to single species and a smaller amount being currently unused. Now look at the type chart again, remember that this game has a Pokedex of nearly 5000, and tell me this is a good idea. Think about all the possible type combinations in a game like this and tell me with a straight face this is a good idea. You fucking can't, because it's not a good idea. So many types are just redundant and exist for the sake of existing too, Fire and Magma being so much alike and Wind being basically just a far worse version of Flying. Some of these types are really cool ideas, I will give credit where credit is due; Food, Magic, and Time are really cool type concepts that work well with the game. Light as a concept has already been covered in the official games with Fairy, likewise Fear is basically just Dark, and despite Cosmic sounding like it should be really powerful it's honestly just mediocre. Chaos is essentially the Shadow Pokemon concept as its own type but the result is pretty damn messy, with most Chaos-types getting OHKO'd if they have a dual typing or if you've had any chance to set-up. This especially doesn't bode well with the later parts of the game where so many battles turn into "whoever can get consistent OHKOs is the winner", and remember that Chaos is weak to everything. The idea is interesting but the way this game is laid-out by the time you get reliable access to the type, well it's basically better to use anything else. Honestly, I found myself rocking two Ice-types in my final team (with a third used near the start of the game before being replaced later on) because most things are hit neutral by it or are just outright weak to it. Seriously, Ice-types in the canon games are depressingly underpowered 99% of the time so seeing them be useful in this game of all things was a nice surprise. I already love the Ice-type so I was content using them regardless, but if you're not a fan then good luck getting by without at least one.

But hey, this game has damn near 5000 Pokemon. So surely the variety must be great, surely the game must do something with this expansive list of creatures! ...noooooo. No, it does not. Before the true final boss (I'll cover it later) my Pokedex sat at not even 2000 Pokemon seen... think about that, really truly honestly think about that. But even worse is that this is counting getting species through wonder trading and official Pokemon too, as well as creatures you can't even catch until the very end or post-postgame. I'm sorry but this is absolutely unforgiveable and just shows what would happen if Game Freak caved and gave us the National Dex back now, with so many of those thousands of Pokemon being unused with one exception that I do NOT count since it's an absolute copout. The crux of this issue comes with the aforementioned stolen sprites, because good fucking god so many of the near-5000 Pokemon are not even original designs. Rather it feels like the creators saw a cool looking sprite online and chose to add it to their game just because they could. This is especially evident in a series of Smash Bros fighters being added near one another with sprites by the same artist, same for a load of Digimon, same for a bunch of My Little Pony characters, same for so many batches of stolen regional form ideas, same for someone's weird human-Pokemon hybrid fetish... do you see the problem? There's so much shit in this game just for the sake of having so much shit in this game. The devs don't give a fuck about the integrity of the content they've added, it's just a factory line of so many Pokemon you won't see let alone use for yourself unless you play on a randomizer and happen to see them or wonder trade and happen to see them. This game would've been fine with the official Pokemon and the fakemon actually seen in the region itself, maybe leave some of the references in there... finding Bowser in a fridge is absurd and funny, for example, and he can mega evolve into Giga Bowser later on too. Stuff that has a place in the game world, please do keep it. But Pikachu with a SpongeBob face is an addition I didn't even know was in the game until I looked through the wiki and found it by chance. Cut this crap out or give it a place in the game. So many of these Pokemon are just useless too with shitty stats (originally mistyped as "shats" which only accentuates the point) and fuck-all for useful moves. And this isn't necessarily a Pokemon Clover situation where the game is balanced enough to beat it with a team made-up of mostly what you want, because...

The difficulty in this game is ass. Sure it starts out fine and dandy and nothing is extremely hard on the main paths. Y'know, ignoring the clusterfuck of types you have to just wrestle with or use the wiki for. But it has a really bad habit of "fuck you" moments, where you'll get stuck in a battle against something you obviously can't beat until so much later into the game and are just forced to lose. Yes, Xenoblade has unique monsters like this too, but the difference is you aren't losing money nor set back too terribly far if you happen to come across these guys too early. Not to mention you at least have a chance at escaping, whereas the Pokemon mechanics here means you'll either be too low-levelled to run away or you're stuck in a trainer battle and have to let your team die anyways. Fun game design. But outside of the fuck you moments, the postgame is where whatever design integrity... all, like, 1% of it... goes out of the window. I've seen people call this part of the game difficult or hard, but after playing this son of a bitch all the way through I think I can say it's in fact neither of those descriptors. Rather, two other words fit it much better: Boring and unfair. The main story has a fair share of potentially Uber-tier Pokemon but that's at least one maybe two per team and they're given reasonable enough stats like real Pokemon would be. The postgame, however, has no respect for your time and is constantly tossing out boss monsters well into and above the 900 BST range. In a few cases, there's more than one of them and in one apparently infamous case you get to fight a whole team of them. Finally calling back to my item comment earlier on, this is where the game also takes the piss; everything with the stupidly high stats loves to have over-time recovery in not just Leftovers but the newly added buffed variants that restore even more HP, or better yet the fuck off and die Corrupt Orb. This mistake has been used sparingly by NPCs prior to the postgame, but in the postgame it feels like everything has it and it is just not fun. What this item does is increase the holder's stats every turn, for free, no matter what. Now there is a battle against a Phione, of all things, holding this orb that becomes a nightmare if you don't stop the item early on. So imagine, if you will, something with 200+ in both defences holding it. It spirals way too fast and turns battling into games of praying you can predict well enough with Knock Off and/or pack at least one Toxic user, or else you just get steamrolled and lose. By the time the game finally gives you one for yourself, it's right at the end of the postgame. As in, quite literally literally: just before the true final boss is when you have a chance at getting it for yourself... so the devs obviously know how broken this thing is, yet happily gave it to NPCs pre-League. It's not impossible to counter as mentioned, but it is annoying and incredibly unfun to have to make sure you pack at least one Knock Off user and at least one Toxic user as a backup because this item on super bulky boss monsters is EVERYWHERE during the postgame. Yet even if a boss doesn't have this item the game won't respect your time, often giving them free HP recovery and moves that also recover HP or pile-on stat boosts. This is where the game absolutely turns into "whoever can get consistent OHKOs is the winner" because you have to haul ass before whatever monstrosity of game design fucks you up first, and in fairness it is sometimes satisfying to be trading OHKOs with the opponent... if they're on-par with you. But getting swept by Uber-tiers, hell swept by Pokemon who I would argue to be banned from even AG-tier, isn't insightful to the flaws of your team or something to show where you could've tried harder. It's just annoying. Keep in mind as well that you'll still be wrestling with the stupid amount of new types and the possible combination your opponent could be whilst also figuring out how bulky and/or strong it is. I'm just saying there's a real good reason why your chance for the Corrupt Orb is saved until the very end and why these boss monsters are post-postgame only unless you absolutely luck out on wonder trade.

The sad thing is, the bad balance doesn't just end there. I wish it did, but no. Unfortunately not. Because this game does not respect your time, nor you as a player. And I mean that. I really, really mean that. The postgame loves to just toss out an absurd amount of trainers at you, many of them not optional or incredibly difficult to avoid, and call that a "challenge". Most of the time you're still dealing with wild Pokemon encounters too. This turns so much of the game into a resource drain leading to a boss fight that you're unlikely to be fully prepared for at that point, encouraging cheap plays and overpowered moves/Pokemon to blast through everything. There's a particular moment where this was absolutely felt and a horrendous showing of the devs not knowing how to video game in the trip back from the Sloggoth Pits... after a tough boss fight, itself instantly followed-up with by another boss, you've got to leave the long winding path you came back from as it is infested with so many overworld encounters that the game would sometimes lag. As well as some more trainer encounters. After fighting trainers along the way... and natural wild Pokemon spawns are still happening. Fuck's sake. It gets so bad that it becomes difficult to open the overworld menu to heal your team. You'll be constantly dragged into fights against the same pretty strong Pokemon over and over again. It is an absolute nightmare, and not even the last time the game pulls something like this. During the should-be finale of the postgame where you're traversing many worlds of various types to fight a boss at the end, they are so often filled with a stupid amount of trainers that exist only to waste your PP and HP along with yet more wild encounters. Another dungeon before this has a similar issue, although at least those fights are primarily double battles so you get free healing from it... bugger me backwards though, it becomes absolutely exhausting to play. What starts out as a decent challenge turns into exhaustion before the halfway point, and yes before the halfway point because so much of this game IS the postgame. And this leads into another issue for me.

So, the tone of this game. I alluded to it earlier and I'm going to go into it properly now. This game starts out as a funny (..."funny") haha adventure where you have rivals named Zaydolf and Anne and the region's economy is seemingly taken over by Juvite Corporation. If you haven't figured out where this all goes by now, I'll be amazed because this game is incredibly unsubtle in being a "lmao hitler" story. Genuinely, the game's story is just your rival being Hitler except the devs didn't have the gall to name him that and thought giving him a slightly different name would lampshade what they're doing. But no, it is just your rival being Hitler and turning on the Juvites with his Team Wack... down to building a purification camp, which is just. Uncomfortable? It's not played for laughs, is the thing. You see Zaydolf's lot taking in Juvites as they beg to be let go and they talk down to them without any humor or lampshading to it, it's just really really uncomfortable. But worse still, somehow this game manages to be less subtle than Pokemon Clover; the game that literally had Hitler in it. Clover's Hitler sidequest is a funny little ditty that sees you following him as he tries to get his art in a museum, but thanks to your limited player actions he ends up becoming a military weapon developer instead. Pokemon Wack makes Zaydolf literally just Hitler. He follows basically the same actions, being an art reject who loathes a certain group and then ends up becoming a dictator who wants to exterminate said group in a vile manner. The only and I mean only lampshade that comes of this is when you beat him for a final time and he asks for your forgiveness. Obviously I gave the correct answer of no and he actually acknowledges that the force possessing him only brought his inner dark desires to the forefront of his person, rather than inspiring him to do something he otherwise wouldn't have. It's a piece of shit "story" and better yet you can actually skip your first meetings with both Zaydolf and Anne, because this game is really well coded. It's honestly the funniest part of the game, like logically you wouldn't even know these guys but they talk about recognizing you and wanting to be your friend and all that... but I didn't even do their first encounters until way late into the game, just to see what I could get away with.

...unfortunately I've already mentioned it, that Zaydolf turns out to have been possessed by something else. This is where Pokemon Wack absolutely shits the bed. If it were just this Hitler story in a crappily made Pokemon world with Family Guy-tier humor, I'd probably respect it more for knowing what it wants to do. But... no. Pokemon Wack absolutely shits the bed when you go into cyberspace and everything starts turning to pot, with attempts at unnerving the player with edgy Photoshop "Pokemon" designs and invisible NPCs talking about how humanity sucks and other philosophical subjects (well, Reddit's definition of the word). For context, this comes not long after you've battled the Nuclear-team gym leader, Hiroshima, in Cherno City. Hiroshima by the way is a samurai who speaks like a stereotyped Asian. Not even a full hour later though, the game is demanding you take it seriously. And yet after that the game is back to its normal wacky antics for the most part, save for some callbacks/vague hints about what's to come. And what's to come... well I already said, the game fucking shits itself.

The beginning of Pokemon Wack's postgame sees you in a corrupt other world that brings to the table more "philosophical" talk with edgy dialogue and NPCs wishing for death and the like. Not a bad opening to be fair. Except we're still dealing with MS Paint Pokemon and your character sprite can be a void, a weird split between Red and Leaf, an attack helicopter, or like it was in my case... some androgynous pink-haired character wearing short-shorts and a crop-top. These aspects alone really distract from the game trying to be more serious, and it genuinely only gets worse from here because not long after this you go and find Anne's imprisoned father who is now being used by this dark force ("HIM") to try and invade the Pokemon world. So the solution, obviously, is to go into space! ...but to get into space you need to finish a rocket, and the rocket piece you're tasked with getting is somehow up in the arctic region. This is honestly a really cool idea and I did love wandering around the snowy areas at first, encountering things Empoleon making it feel extra fitting. But as you journey further on it turns into this out of place story about a tribe turned into cannibals with eldritch Pokemon inspired by (if you somehow didn't already guess) H.P. Lovecraft mythos now frequently appearing. Again... whilst you can look like a fucking femboy stripper and whilst so many Pokemon use crappy MSPaint sprites and have stupid cries. This is where the game fully shits itself, in my eyes, as it demands to be taken seriously over what genuinely could've been a pretty interesting story. But Pokemon Wack has NO RIGHT to pull this card out after doing a "he's literally hitler" story just a couple hours prior to all of this. The game just becomes super serious and edgy and it doesn't fit, it really doesn't fit. Also this portion of the game has a room full of gore-ish, so that wasn't cool. Fuck off.

Yet worse again though? The game honestly PEAKS during the transition from earth to space. Following the cannibal story you have to do an incredibly tedious puzzle cave to fight Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza which is about where I would've given-up if I didn't figure out the Rayquaza maze quicker than expected. But as you get launched into space, you have to fight a number of (canon) legendaries to prove your worth whilst Don't Stop Me Now plays in the background. This level of absurdity is something that the game even tries to do again a second time yet absolutely fails at it, because it somehow missed what made this first sequence so great; it's relatively quick and feels appropriately grand with a super hype, feel-good song blaring in the background. It is so much fun and actually got me to smile, I can't lie. This really is where the game just does peak, because it's unfortunately mostly downhill from then on... trying to play itself deadly serious and do this Lovecraft-inspired story about otherworldly monsters of epic proportion and how terrible things were destined to happen because of HIM and yadda yadda yadda... again it's really hard to care when this game is so at odds with its own tone. Reminder; the game starts off with you fighting an artist named Zaydolf, but now wants you to take his story contributions seriously as you explore the moon for ooo spooky monsters (more than half of them are an Evangelion reference btw) and fight not-Exodia. Whilst NPCs are STILL using the Shia LaBeouf Pokemon and mega Clefable which is a Sailor Moon reference. Pick a tone and STICK TO IT. Genuinely, more than half of this game is trying to be the edgy Lovecraft mythos despite the front of the game being lmao Hitler and a huge majority of the Pokedex comprising of stupid meme shit and Gardevoir with huge ass tits. This game had Bowser HIDING IN A FUCKING FRIDGE AND WANTS ME TO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY AT THE SAME TIME. OK, yes, EarthBound arguably has a similar problem with it turning into a cosmic destroyer plot, but it was set-up as such from the start. It wasn't a plot about Ness wanting to beat-up stray animals and bystanders that turned into existential dread about the oncoming death of everything and when it does want you to take itself more seriously, it basically revokes many of the comedic aspects to show you the full gravity of the situation. Pokemon Wack on the other hand is still doing the funny anime references whilst trying to do a serious story. You can deadass have the twin towers on your party as all this super serious edgelord crap is going down, it does NOT work.

...and yet somehow the devs still find a way to surprise in all the worse ways, because the edgelord comment really rings true when you get sent to another dimension full of ooo scaryyyy things. Except the devs didn't know how to make actually scary things so the only time I was scared was because I stupidly played at 4am whilst half-awake and wasn't expecting Nurse Joy to jumpscare me with a loud sound and JPEG face. This particular instance turns into a battle by the way, one that goes on for way too long and thus quickly loses any scare factor it had. Seriously... you heal your team and Nurse Joy turns into a monster thing that uses a corrupt, messed-up Chansey to fight you. That's an unnerving concept. But the battle goes on for so fucking long that the tediousness of the situation takes over any potential scariness it had. There's another part in the game that forces you to watch a train JPEG kill an NPC with a blood splat PNG covering the screen, and you fight the bloody remains which calls you a "stain on the world"... honestly this is another point where I nearly gave up, because I just tapped out so damn hard.

I could list so many aspects of this game that don't work and go against the name and concept of it. But I'd be here alllllll fucking day and I've already typed out way too much. So to cap off my point, it turns out that none of the horrific story even mattered! Because HIM, all along, was the game itself trying to fight you and get you to quit playing. This, ladies and germs, shows to me that the devs did not give a single FUCK about what they were doing. Yet, somehow, it leads into a cool final fight against your own team... stolen directly from Pokemon Clover, but cool regardless. It also would've been a cool final fight if it were actually the final fight, but no the game keeps taking the piss with a true final boss that has you fight all near-5000 Pokemon in the game. In one run. One team, one chance. If it weren't for so much of my team being outright overpowered I definitely would've given in here but I persisted, regretfully, and just finished the piece of shit. My reward was another Evangelion reference, not even a good one, they didn't even play the correct music and the credits that played were the same as the credits that led into the postgame plot. They actually didn't try with this one. It's also why I don't count this final rush as using all the Pokemon the game has to offer, because it is the literal last postgame fight and I will bet actual money that not even 100 people played the game to this point. I am dead serious. I usually go "well statistically speaking..." but if most people I've seen complained about the tedium of the moon encounters, which is only barely the halfway point of the game, then I severely doubt many of them made it past all the other planets. Let alone the horror-themed worlds, or the type-themed worlds, which is more of the same shit except Oops! All Corrupt Orb!

The more I recalled my time with this game, the more I recalled just how much I hated. I left it with a "thank fuck that's over feeling" but still remembering the genuinely fun moments it had... now actually writing a review, though, I realize I probably only had fun with most of those moments (excluding the first Don't Stop Me Now sequence because that will always be great) because they were a break from the rest of the game's unbalanced and bipolar bullshit. Look, the idea of a silly Pokemon game isn't a bad one. Nor is the idea of a horror-themed Pokemon game. But Pokemon Wack is barely one of these, with so much of the humor barely being there and only the most absurd of jokes getting me by surprise (Bowser in the fridge and a swimmer NPC who turns into a door post-battle, to name a couple I still think are funny) whilst the game is too cowardly to make anything above Family Guy-level humor. For real... I imagine this is the kind of game most people imagine Pokemon Clover is, except no Clover actually embraces the cringe nature of its NPCs even when delivering a more intriguing story. Pokemon Wack on the other hand is too cowardly to use naughty words whilst inexplicably recolouring the burglar sprite to be a black man. Come the fuck on. At least Clover had balls to use dirty, offbeat language to get cringing laughs out of you.

Then there's the horror themed elements. This game isn't a Pokemon-themed horror game when it turns into this, because it's all fakemon and boss monsters that barely count as Pokemon; the official Pokemon are only to be found as fodder or if you're using any yourself, or fighting with Zaydolf or Anne who use some official Pokemon. It's a tryhard "horror" game that happens to be made with a Pokemon game engine, the most it doing being a handful of fuck you jumpscares or edgy MS Paint gore designs that really honestly just remind me of an edgy Pokemon game I made when I was 13 and about to kill myself. Except even THAT had more to do with actual Pokemon than Wack does. What Wack does really is the equivalent of a scary maze game, setting you up with something innocuous (ignoring the attempts at edgy humor, anyways) before pushing "spooky" shit into your face whether you like it or not. And again this is all still done with MS Paint, and y'know what some designs still look cool in the style but I cannot and will not take your horror game seriously if it is all drawn shoddily with the pencil tool. Try to put actual effort in, don't be an edgy tryhard.

I said it earlier, I'll say it again. This game does NOT respect you, as a player. It exists only to waste time whilst admitting to trying to get you to quit. This isn't some obscure art experiment that's being clever, it's a 13 year old thinking blood and guts in a Pokemon game is SO SUPER DUPER COOOOOL!!! except this 13 year old can't program very well nor draw in anything except the good ole Paint program. It's embarrassing how this should-be silly game demands you listen to it when it wants to tell an actual story, only to then at the end say "Yeah none of this mattered and none of this is real lol". Not only does it make the whole endeavor feel pointless but it undermines any sense of integration into a larger world this game would've had. It already had basically zero, don't get me wrong, but you could at least rationalize some of it as fitting into the Pokemon world. Then they drank one too many beers, pissed all over the carpet and thought they were being clever whilst doing so. Fangames do exist in a world of their own, truly, but at least the likes of Clover, Xenoverse, and Unbound (unrelated note: yes I am still playing that one I know I'm taking forever on it) do try to make themselves feel like some part of the official franchise's world. Pokemon Wack, just like the people who made it, doesn't give a shit. It wants to do funny hitler memes, then it wants to do Lovecraft but worse in every way, then it wants to be edgy indie game of the week for that sweet markiplier faceman reaction, and then it crumbles under its own weight and decides to pull the card of "nothing matters because I said nothing matters, which makes this game super clever now"... nah. Fuck this game.

This game was a shockingly quick playthrough, ironic given the content it boasts. Most of it is just optional side-fluff that mainly relates to canon Pokemon though, ones that haven't received many if any changes and as such why bother using them when the game is also boasting so many original creations? ...so many original creations that aren't even original. This game not only steals its ideas and its spritework, but it steals your time too. This barely even gets the 1-star I'm leaving it with. Play literally any other fangame, it'll either be actually good or so bad you can laugh at it. This one just outright sucks.

And just in case I need to further "prove" I finished this mistake,
https://i.imgur.com/lRiTIrJ.png
Wack.

Taking a brief break from Pokémon games for what is an impromptu nostalgia trip for me; puzzle game mood randomly struck me and I knew I had to revisit this one. Scribblenauts! ...no shit, you've seen what review this game is for.

When I say nostalgic, I really do mean nostalgic. This game was one I followed since seeing the pre-release covered in a Nintendo magazine and the very idea of being able to create anything(*) to solve various puzzles was enough to get me absolutely hyped for the game. I've always been big on wanting to draw, write, and program projects of my own so having a game that encouraged creating your own solutions with numerous possible ways to complete each level blew me away. Alas, I wasn't fortunate enough to be able to get it on launch day, but come Chrimbo 2009 the game was in my possession and it expectedly became my newest obsession as soon as it was mine. I can still remember absolutely loving discovering everything the game had to offer, finding out the solutions to the various levels, discovering what words were actually usable in the game at all... like I said, massively nostalgic game for me right here. And I loved it so much, I completed it 100%.
...at least I'm pretty sure I did? I have no way of actually verifying this because of an infamous incident where one of my family members who borrowed the game from me deleted my save file. Rather than just use the second save slot. Needless to say I was pissed and still bring it up whenever I see him, mostly to be 'that guy' because it annoys him. Thankfully he wasn't around to borrow the game again when replaying it for this review.

Scribblenauts is... as I already described. A game full of puzzle stages where the solutions are created by you writing words to spawn items from an in-game dictionary list, and this very premise is a strong one from the very start. As mentioned, just seeing some magazine pages of it was enough to get me hooked and hyped! And to be fair this game does deliver on that premise mostly well, because the amount of words in this game is still rather surprisingly big. There's plenty you wouldn't expect to exist in the game at all and a number of developer easter eggs too (as well as special Konami characters if you're Japanese, but I'm not so damn it) which makes the game feel more than just a visual dictionary that happens to also be a video game. The way everything looks and animates, too, really does add to the charm and it's an art-style I still adore to this day. It fits the DS incredibly well but even in promotional material the style looks unique despite being simple when you break it down, it serves it's purpose really well. The way they handled character emotions/reactions in-game is super unique too without leaving the player feeling lost or confused. Visually it is honestly fantastic and perhaps one of my favourite looking titles on the DS system. How much of that is familiarity bias... I couldn't tell you.

There are a ton of levels (200+!) in this game split across ten worlds with twenty-two levels in each, eleven of two different categories; puzzle stages and action stages. The former require you to solve puzzles that make a Starite- your end of level McGuffin in this series -appear, whilst the latter have a Starite already placed within the map and you have to make your way there. Often still with a degree of puzzle-solving involved, considering you have to write words to get there. Puzzle stages ended up being my favourite by far by the end of the game as they really do get your braincells racking about to think of what could be just one of many solutions to the situations presented before you, and though action stages aren't too bad... for the most part... they end up suffering from a key problem this game has and that would be the wonky controls. Something I absolutely forgot about and I assume willingly blocked through the power of nostalgia blindness, because oh my god are the controls really imperfect here.

The control scheme is actually really simple and, on paper, really good; you hold your stylus in a direction to move around the stage, tap/hold upwards to jump. However, Maxwell (our lovable protagonist) has an unusual amount of speed to him and will very rarely stop right away. This leads to falling into a pit- be it of fire, spikes, or the void itself -way more times than should otherwise be possible. It is worse, though, when Maxwell refuses to stop jumping in-place like a sugar-fed toddler at a cinema because then you have to tap somewhere else on the screen to get him to stay still... which can once more lead to unintentional deaths if he moves in the wrong way. This imprecise touch screen movement also seems to extend to the objects themselves too as a number of times some objects I created would only want to be dragged when touched in a specific way, yet this also seemed inconsistent. First time making a black hole? It worked fine. Second time with the same object? Just got stuck hovering in place as I somehow failed to drag it with me. It's so weird and just oddly unrefined, I genuinely don't remember it being this imperfect... the game is still perfectly playable with these issues intact, don't get me wrong, but man. Stages that could be completed in one or two tries instead take so much longer to finish because you're likely to accidentally die a couple of times due to these controls.

How this specifically affects action stages should, I feel, be obvious. You're trying to platform or race or make a mad-dash for your end of level goal with controls that sometimes work but sometimes don't instead. Add explosive items, spike balls, fire grills, or combat encounters to the mix and a lot of the time action stages became a bit groan-worthy with what you've got to put up with. Fighting not just the level obstacles but the game itself. Puzzle levels can sometimes be affected by this, too, if harmful obstacles get included as part of the layout but I can't really remember any such issue. No instead puzzle levels seemed to suffer from a bit of redundancy, my chief example being a number of similar "get (x) to (y)" objectives that most of the time can have the same- or at least incredibly similar -solution. For fuck's sake the second to last puzzle level of the ENTIRE GAME is a "get (x) to (y)" stage, whereas it easily could've been placed much earlier in the game. I don't have an issue with similar level structures as this is the kind of game where there are often hundreds of possible solutions to any one stage, but when the actual layouts end up being simple along with having similar objectives? Come on...

It really is a shame because a lot of these levels are super good. But the repetition of certain layouts and simplified objectives becomes clear after a while of playing, where it feels like they added a huge amount of stages mainly for the sake of it. And I don't say this to try and disrespect the developers, I have SO much respect for what they did to bring us this game even with an apparently limited development cycle (it does kinda show) with the final product still being good. I want that to be remembered; I do not think this game is bad, because that would be wrong. This game is still good in spite of it's flaws. It's just that these flaws intertwine with not only each other, but the core of the game as well. This makes it pretty difficult to just overlook them. Honestly with some polish to the controls and spiced-up level objectives, this would've easily scored higher for me. But as it is, I don't think I can give more than 3-stars even with all my nostalgia bias. I would still definitely recommend this game if you haven't played it before, because it is absolutely worth a shot! Just be aware than it is definitely imperfect in a way that can hurt the fundamentals on show.

All in all? A really good start to a really great series. The controls are ass, a chunk of repetitive levels feel fairly pointless, and some level solutions are comprised of pop culture references that although clever would be frustrating to those who aren't in-the-know. But the graphics, the music, and the gameplay- both at its core and with the best of the level designs -really do save it. If you're not even a big fan of puzzle games but the premise interests you, please give it a go! I may not have the rose-tinted love for this game that I expected to coming back to it, but that I still remembered something of basically every single level after years of not playing is a really positive sign that they made something very special.

Up next... Super Scribblenauts. Will this sequel released a mere year later fare much better? (spoilers: yes)

Super Scribblenauts! ...no shit, once again. I hopped back into this one the day after finishing the first game and holy shit the improvements were INSTANTLY noted, this is another game you can get through relatively quickly but it feels so much more complete and fleshed-out than what came before it. So, let's get right into it...

Off the bat, the controls were majorly fixed. Not only can you use the D-pad for movement if you so wish, but Maxwell no longer runs like he's in a platform game and instead has a more leisurely pace and can only jump if there's a reason for him to do so. This helps so much in avoiding stupid accidents and navigating the stages a lot better, too. It feels like the touchscreen controls have overall been improved as well since I never had any issue when trying to drag objects around, unlike the first game. Whether or not the precision on this was actually fixed or I experienced a placebo... no clue, but I'm bringing it up anyways.

Another thing Super does so much better is the way stages are designed. Goodbye platforming in a game ill-suited to such stages! Whilst there are levels that have light platforming elements it no longer expects you to play what is more or less a stage from a game with different core designs which is a huge boon; even the bonus worlds that tout more action-orientated stages utilize more of a puzzle-action hybrid, compared to the action stages of the original game which- though still not terrible, I want to say -are inferior to the ones introduced here. With the game making more direct use of its design philosophies, main gameplay quirks, and status as a puzzle-genre entry it is a lot more addictive and enjoyable to play through. It also ends up making you think more than the first game, using a bigger variety of words even just playing casually. Truly making the most of its huge digital dictionary. Furthering this are the addition of 'advance stages', which is marathoning an already completed stage three times in one sitting. The catch? You can only use a word once per sitting! Whilst very simple on paper this is genuinely a perfect add to a puzzle game such as this one, it really does get your brain whirring and thinking up more and more diverse words to try slamming into the notebook. See what could possibly work, bringing out potentially unexpected answers. It's brilliant. Simple but brilliant.

...and now we address the biggest add of Super Scribblenauts: Adjectives. Genuinely this adds so much more charm to the game and makes it ten times more fun to play, this feature alone makes the first game look shallow by comparison. Though not always needed, the majority of the game encourages the use of adjectives and specific stages require you use objects accented with relevant adjectives; even on stages that might not require it, though, you can just create a more fun and outlandish solution. In the first game you'd probably hover between the same few vehicle objects where required, but in Super I was making things such as a 'friendly rideable winged fast coral snake' for the simplest of stage solutions. The adjectives really bring forth one's creative side and quickly become hard-baked into the way you play the game, even if its just on a smaller scale compared to the example I gave. There's a reason this game is advertised with Maxwell riding a winged bathtub, it's genuinely a pretty accurate depiction of what you can expect to be doing throughout your time here. Love to see it.

The par system has been done away with, the seemingly random tally system for Ollars has been nipped, merits feel more like actual achievements compared to random bonuses... all just some small changes that do go a long way. The presentation, too, feels a lot more tight and professional even though much of the original game's sprites were used here. Likewise, it makes a much more effective use of the OST by having randomized music for each stage as opposed to every stage having one set song that always loops on replay. It really is a small detail in the grand scheme of things but it DOES go a long way! Hell, there are some songs here that you'd barely hear in the original game as well as new compositions mixed-in that blend with the first game's oh so perfectly well. Really I can only tell what one is from which game because I've played them for too long over my lifetime...

Genuinely, Super Scribblenauts is one of the best video game sequels that I've ever played. It does everything a sequel should strive to do: Providing more of what made the first game so beloved whilst meaningfully building on it without feeling like a plain rehash, something that we barely see with game sequels even today. The game is unfortunately still really short even when you go for completing everything all the way, maybe this can be chalked-up to me knowing the games better on replay... and replaying them at all, but keeping in mind it has been so many years since I even touched these games and still got through them both within a week? They're not 'easy', per se, and I do love that stages are pretty bite-sized so that they don't overstay their welcome. But it's something that I feel is hard to stay with for too long, just because there's not enough to keep you there for too much longer once you've finished everything... it is a point of detraction, because it's such a huge shame. This game makes you want more of it! So, so much more! It's an honestly near-perfect sequel, it only needed to have more stages to reach that coveted 5-star rating.

...But what is here is till top-notch shit. Make no mistake. Super Scribblenauts is still one of my favourite Nintendo DS titles to this day, I can appreciate it so much more now that I'm past my dumbass years (mostly) and get a lot more enjoyment from it that way. I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping the first game and heading straight into this one because it absolutely overshadows what came before, it receives a very high recommendation from me. Whether you're playing it for the first time ever, or picking it up again after many years like I did... do yourself a favor and go get this game! One of the most fun and charming little puzzle outings you can find on one of the most charming handheld consoles.

More of an excuse for me to avoid finishing Unbound? One could see it that way, but... no, I honestly just had a glimmer of nostalgia that I wanted to satisfy (helped by this game getting a big cameo in Clover). Because hoo fucking boy is Snakewood something surprisingly nostalgic for me. Not only that but the game is infamously popular within the community and for good reason. As well as bad reason. Snakewood, as far as I can recall, is one of the first ROM hacks to majorly change the Pokémon format up; which is to say, focusing more on new story directions and generally ignoring the "beat up gym leaders and become winner" plot beats that the series is known for. So it's a bit of a small landmark in that regard? It feels weird to admit and I could be totally misremembering, but as far as I'm aware... this thing right here was once one of the more 'advanced' hacks you could pick up, stepping out of line to do more. I feel like it's become popular for this alone, for daring to try something different and- at the time -being a shakeup from shit like Chaos Black and Quartz. Other hacks from around this time like AshGray would have a similar idea, with similar popularity too. But nowadays, how do they hold up? ...sorry, 'it'. Snakewood is the only game I'm looking at here.

Snakewood is based on Pokémon Ruby and unlike basically ever single modern hack ever squirted onto the internet, was born at a time where the physical/special split was either nonexistent or a niche idea. I'm actually OK with this conceptually, although mainly for nostalgia factor because by the time Gen.3 rolled around the phys/spec typing system was really showing its primitive nature. The Pokémon you get in Snakewood, though, usually make good use of the system even if unfortunate carryovers like Absol still exist. So whilst the gameplay at its core is untouched, why dedicate a section to it? It's certainly not the "disease" type, because that's just a renamed "???" type... no I give mention to the gameplay because it's also housing what is Snakewood's most infamous aspect, the absolutely ABSURD difficulty. This is felt as early as Petalburg Woods where the first roadblock crops up in an instant, having to fight fairly high-level Houndour and Murkrow ("zombie" versions of them but they have the same stats so whatever) that are definitely going to sweep the unknowing and unprepared; this being the start of the game, too, leaves you with fairly limited team options. And the starters at your disposal, though very unique choices, don't help a ton: Koffing, Baltoy, and Paras. Paras in particular is basically playing this game on hard mode, in a game that is already hard mode by default. And again, keep in mind this is an encounter within just the opening hours of the game. Not long after you're facing the glassiest of glass cannons in a battle against a Deoxys expy... followed by an endurance round against a number of Anorith (not usually a tough Pokémon, but in the early game with limited type options it becomes a bit of a wall)... soon after you're fighting some reskinned Charizards, which itself is shortly followed by a gym fight with an awfully infamous gimmick 'mon that you have to stall out. Again, cleaning unprepared/unknowing players with ease. These encounters are clumped in the early game too, remember: All of these examples are just the early game. And they get followed in the near future against a fight involving Raikou, in what could barely be considered the mid game. Gym leaders will later pull legendaries right out of nowhere in a certain back-to-back fight, other legendaries- real and Fakémon -will begin appearing with surprising frequency later down the line... and even if teams aren't crushingly overpowered, the sheer volume of trainers you may have to fight in any given area makes the balancing super dumb. Especially when trainers average about 3 or so Pokémon per team, it makes the game tedious to play a lot of the time; stack-up on items as much as possible, because holy shit you'll need them. Thankfully you can exploit an infinite free potions script at the start of the game, but is that any way to play the game? Being lame like that?

But if its not the battles that rustle people's jimmies, it is absolutely and understandably the overworld chicanery. To give an idea of how badly balanced some of this is, there are SIX puzzle guides given by the creator on the Pokécommunity page for the game. This not counting other grievous areas such as the various doorways on the inquisition island that make traversing things a nightmare, including a warp that sends you right back to do it all over again. Or a trap tile in a later dungeon that sees you forced into an unwinnable fight against a legendary Fakémon, leading you to have to do everything over again if you didn't know that could happen. Really I could keep going but a lot of these boil down to "if you didn't know it was coming, you're getting sent back to the start" and nobody enjoys a game that fucks with them that way. If you claim you do, you're just actually lying; there are clever and fun ways to have your game mess with the player, but cryptic puzzles and/or traps that leave you having to do the same room all over again just because you were playing the game blind... it's not fun. And even as someone running the game for the sixth time now (told you I have nostalgia for this one) I can identify it as unfun, unbalanced, and just pure tedium of game design. The idea of adding harder puzzles isn't a bad one, and heck the Magnemite/Ditto puzzles are great in concept. But they fall flat in execution because of how cryptic they get, especially the former considering it has to be specifically Magnemite... so having a Magneton or Magnezone ain't gonna work, just leading to frustration for players. Overall; the puzzles are too cryptic and unfun for their own good, and the battle balancing is all out of wack aside from the mid game (which also has the best pacing imo) and end game (where everything is at least close enough on-par in terms of strength by then). Why keep going? Because honestly, when you're not stuck in Shaderu hell the game can feel satisfying to beat. Yes, I hate when fangames use legendary Pokémon as an excuse for challenge, but it's thankfully not quite Radical Red levels where everyone and their mom stumbled upon mythics and legends and pseudos. This doesn't excuse the abundance of super strong Pokémon before you'd be adequately equipped to face them, for sure, but it's at least not every trainer. You get me? They pull SOME punches, most trainers who have Uber-tiers make enough sense having them. But these battles should've been spaced better imo, saved for later on in the game. Because Snakewood adds plenty of threatening and cool new Fakémon even without legendaries, seeing those get used more frequently would've been great. Because as it is, a lot of the zombie Pokémon are either repeated over and over (Graveill line, Moulder line, Houndsour line...) or used in maybe only one or two areas in the entire game (Stitcher and Shinigami are especially guilty of this). Although I will admit, the limited use of the Telefang monsters (yes I'm serious) makes sense considering they're only involved for a smaller part of the story. I rambled longer than I meant to... game balance is stinky, that's the point I wanted to make.

However, Snakewood prides itself on story! So how is the story? ...well the creator admitted to losing interest in it partway through making the game, so that's a brilliant notion to dive in with. But I digress. I honestly didn't really guess as such until reading it outright, because the plot... is confused and messy, but for this game it makes just enough sense. Now this is NOT a good story, hell I can only just about bring myself to call it passable, but Snakewood is so unhinged and off-the-wall that by its own standards it somehow works. Barely. Now there is a huge caveat to this, and that is the game starting off with a more bleak tone that becomes dropped in favour of something more parodic around halfway through; this makes the later push back towards a serious narrative feel weird, because by then it feels like the game had stopped dealing with the darker aspects initially setup. As said in my Pokémon Wack review I don't mind a game that wants to try both tones! It can be done well when pulled off correctly. But in here, it really feels forced; mainly with how the Deadly Seven just, out of nowhere, go from lmao funny action guys spouting nonsense to starkly seriously martial art warriors. If there were more telltale signs that there was more to them than meets the eye, this twist would be pretty enjoyabe. But it comes off as "damn I made the game too silly, how is this apocalypse plot going to be taken seriously now?" and a sharp turn into reverse to try and save-face. Amazingly the car doesn't crash in this scenario, but definitely suffers damage regardless. What also doesn't help is a lot of characters and plot beats from the first half of the game get scrapped or rushed into a rewritten form because, by the creator's own admission, he was bored with the original idea. This especially stings with the horsemen plot, as it ends up going basically nowhere. A lot of fluff comes up once or twice only, usually just to be filler... and this game unfortunately predates Wack by having a "voice of god" moment where creator-kun admits that nothing that has happened matters, or will matter. Thankfully this is an optional scene (at least I believe it is...) and doesn't come with the game ending, but it's still bizarre to have the player character just. Accept that nothing in the world matters, and continue onwards despite that. It's also very immersion breaking, as also mentioned in my Wack critique, granted this game was already very loosely dangling the immersion threads by that point in the story.

So... the gameplay is messily balanced, the story is unfocused and goes off-rail too much to be taken fully seriously, the zombie Pokémon are barely even usable for yourself. Why isn't this a 1-star game? Because it does do a complete and unique journey, for better or worse. Snakewood may not necessarily excel at anything it sets out to do, but it still has plenty of good and fun ideas that function for the most part. Consider as well the timeframe in which this was released. To have played it on launch must've been something else, because even as someone a little later to the party (I first played it in early 2012) seeing everything unique the game had set out to do was a lot of fun. Nowadays it's nothing more than a relic of the past: An embarrassing mess of ideas that unfortunately rarely works out or results in anything cohesive. This game is hard to call good or even OK... but it's such a mess that it becomes enjoyable in a twisted way. "So bad it's good" if you will. The main issue is how first-time players will be stuck, lost, and undoubtedly frustrated because of everything that is so cryptic about it. Especially if they've come off of playing newer, better hacks that respect your time and are just generally well put-together. But for an oldie in the ROM hack scene like myself, this one doesn't get as much scorn from me as it would others. Fuck, as mentioned earlier this was my sixth playthrough of the game! I'm amazed at myself for being able to stomach it even half that many times, because wow... I really wouldn't blame anyone dropping this partway through, or ignoring it outright.

The story doesn't know what it wants to do, the main draw of zombie Pokémon is unfortunately undercooked, the attempts at humour reek of 2010s lolrandom internet, the balancing is all over the place, there are a number of glitches ranging from harmless to save-destroying (including right at the end of the game yikes), there's a handful of Pokémon with unfinished sprites, there are sprites that are comedically unpolished ("Gigawolf" is fucking funny)... yet I just still enjoy this one. It's a mess, but it's a beautiful mess. I really do miss this age of Pokémon ROM hacking, before decomp hacks became standard and people instead had to carefully articulate every sprite and script change as to not fuck-up everything. Snakewood pales compared to most ROM hacks, saying nothing of how its heavily outclassed by decomp projects, but it's so bad it's good. I feel this game encompasses the "if you know, you know" phrase; people who've played this in the past will get a sick sense of enjoyment out of it. But if you're not nostalgic for this game or the era it comes from, it is a very VERY difficult recommendation to make... and not one I think I could suggest, even if it would be your first Pokémon ROM hack.

Snakewood is a relic. It's a relic covered in grime and dirt that'll be worth 50 cents on the second-hand market, but it's still a relic that has fond memories associated with it. Just like a gunky relic, you know it's shit and not worth much of anything, but you want to hold onto it for that sentimental value; for being "of its time". It's not good, but I enjoy it. And that's OK.

Another little bit of a detour to get myself some sudden nostalgia fix-up, and a rather weird one at that... I've always loved Kirby, I really have. Very simple but enjoyable games with great art to them and easy to follow story. Yet as a kid I actually skipped this one for the longest time and it's really stupid as to why; I saw the word "nightmare" in the game title and was deathly afraid of it. This despite lapping-up the uncanny worlds in Crystal Shards and all of the... weirdly dark imagery in Dream Land 3. No, those were fine, but "nightmare" being in a game's title was enough to strike fear into me. I guess it just came with a certain expectation for my overactive kid mind, not helped by the international boxart having Kriby pissed as ever whilst Meta Knight waits in the dark. Honestly looking at it now, the boxart looks like one of those bad fanmade covers you see online with how it uses Right Back At Ya artwork... I'm getting way off track.

I picked this game up later than I should've because of the title, but thankfully when I did get to it a couple years late I still really enjoyed it. And unfortunately I don't think I can say a whole lot on this one for a simple reason, it's basically Kirby's Adventure but good. Not saying that game is bad, I've definitely loved my time playing it as a young something or other, but the age definitely shows for it and it's just outright outclassed by this one. The music I can go either way on but it's obviously much stronger sounding here with not being restricted by the NES sounds, the gameplay feels a lot smoother to actually play, and the graphics are genuinely some of the best on the GBA and even outclass a good amount of DS titles if you ask me. This one is just super good, it's your standard Kirby game here; bright and colourful with great setpieces fit to a super catchy soundtrack, really fun minigames in case the chill vibes weren't already chill enough, and some very neat optional content for completionist types. Which is where most of my comments will go to; your 100% play rewards.

Extra Mode is piss. Fantastic start, but it's true! If you know what you're doing with this game then being restricted in your health will not matter too much in a lot of cases, just play a bit more carefully and you'll get through it fine. In fact there's less agency to this mode compared to the NES original since you're no longer forced to do it all in one sitting, so the only change is Kirby forgot to take his meds today and isn't able to take as much shit. I guess. It's pretty easy but I say this having playing both this and the original game multiple times now, I'm sure for a less experienced player they may find more difficulty in it. But completing this mode unlocks the far more worthwhile thing here; Meta Knightmare.

This mode is a lot more fun. Basically take Extra Mode, remove Kirby from the equation, put Meta Knight in his place, and then restore the "finish it one go" condition of Adventure's Extra Mode. So you're essentially speedrunning the game from start to end whilst having an entirely new character at your disposal, being a bit of a hodge-podge of some of Kirby's copy abilities to allow you to solve puzzles and break blocks a bit easier. They've since done two other iterations of this mode (Meta Knightmare Ultra in Super Star Ultra and Meta Knightmare Returns in Planet Robobot) and I would say they both do more to be worth revisiting; between it's giving Meta Knight more unique gameplay quirks and adding new, different boss/enemy encounters along the way. Not to say this original iteration is bad, because it's definitely a worthy second playthrough and worth pushing through Extra Mode for. It's super weird having Meta Knight beat-up... himself? But I'm here for it.

All-in-all, this is just simply a good Kirby game. There may be some rarer moments of 'screen crunch' making things from the NES original a little bit more unfair, but these moments are very far and few between. This one is just good, I don't know how many more times I can say that. If you've never touched Kirby before then this one is a great place to start... 21 years later, good fucking god. Existentialism aside, you can very easy pick this one up and get it done relatively quick I imagine. I went for the 100% route and still got it done in only a few days, not sure how those less familiar with the game will handle it but it should be all good regardless. Very easy recommendation to Kirby newcomers or those looking for something a bit simpler.

Yet another bit of a nostalgia trip for me, this one. It's hard to believe this game is over 10 years old, perhaps ironic to say considering the art style would date it further back in the eyes of unaware people. I've played this game two times in the past; once on 3DS and once on PC. Since I'm currently at a point in my life where I'm more comfortable with playing portable games (it's why my 3DS has become my frequent travel buddy this year) I decided to replay the 3DS port, a bit of bias in there as it's also the one I've spent the most time on in the past.

Off the bat, I owe a lot to VVVVVV. For one, it helped me win a "name a video-game" thing in one of my programming classes many years ago as nobody else thought of something beginning with the letter V. But more genuinely this game was one of my first forays into indie titles, drawn in by the delightfully simple premise... a puzzle-platformer where instead of jumping, you invert gravity. And for as simple as that idea is the game REALLY runs with it in such an unforgettable way, because whilst you'd maybe expect something a little on the easier/watered-down side this is a game made for those who like a bit more challenge in their playthroughs and are at least fine with balanced trial-and-error. Given I gave Pokémon Clover 5-stars whilst noting the trial-and-error gameplay there as a huge highlight, safe to say this has always been my kind of thing.

What really helps this type of gameplay is the frequent checkpoints combined with "1 hit = dead". Your main obstacles here will be spikes, continuing video game trends of the cover art showing our main antagonist, and they'll be placed on the ground, ceiling, walls, in circle-ish shapes... you may or may not have to dodge enemies at the same time as well, going from surface-to-surface. Angling yourself to land in the right spot at the right time, making sure your initial flip itself is done at the right time too. And that's without adding in things like conveyors, gravity lines, moving platforms, breaking platforms... they do a lot to make the simple idea so much more creative and enjoyably unique, without ever really feeling unfair. There are some player levels that can take the piss at times but those are unofficially created, granted they did choose to feature them so I guess they could possibly count. Not part of the main game though so I don't choose to count them.

Most people who haven't touched the game are probably at least aware of the soundtrack, or certainly the tracks Pushing Onwards and Positive Force at bare minimum. But this soundtrack is very well beloved for good reason; despite being only 16 tracks big, each composition is incredible earworm material without ever really feeling tiring. They suit the kinds of levels they get placed in and especially fit the game's mysterious vibes and awesome graphical style... which I guess I'll also quickly touch on. The sprites are definitely very simple but used effectively, with a fantastic variety in colours and patterns as well as visual effects to bring backgrounds to life. It's deceptively simple and effectively simple, rolled into one.

Is there anything about this game I don't like? ...that's a question I've been trying to ask myself, hence the review coming in a bit late here. Sometimes the hit detection can feel a bit wonky and the controls slightly sensitive, but that's honestly about it. The core of the game is tons of fun with lots of variety to the levels, getting your brain thinking hard when you get stuck and granting a huge burst of dopamine after getting beyond a tricky section to reach a checkpoint. Even better if you decide to go after all the fittingly named optional Trinkets, which encourage you to explore the expansive open-world map to the fullest in order to find and collect them. This game's one huge challenge with barely a weak moment, lots of side-content on offer and replay value for veteran players or complentionists. If the premise has your interest, I'd highly recommend picking this one up because it's never let me down and is always a brilliantly fun time. It's available on just about every platform now for affordably cheap prices, go and get it when you have some spare change. You won't be let down.