if you have seen pokemon reborn, chances are you will eventually stumble into pokemon rejuvenation. it borrows some of the field system in here, but it's been neutered to be less of a tide changer in your fights. probably for the best, but, i don't know, i kind of miss how it was in reborn.

rejuvenation and reborn, to me, have something one is lacking from the other. i think rejuvenation's plot is more easy to grasp and process what's going on (and well colosseum is one of my favorite games so get me there and i'll be charmed) in comparison to reborn. aelita, zetta, saki, ren and erin were my favorites. genuinely i was (and still am) intrigued on parts of the story that i still don't have exact answers too. the developers are good at building that intrigue, and there's more of an effort to maintain relationships in the game due to diverging paths depending on your relationship with people.

though, i wish there were multiple saves because of it. i udnerstand this is a pokemon fangame and it's intended to have one save only, but it gets tedious exporting specific copies of my saves. i like to see everything in the games i play after all. and it's a pain in the ass to play compared to reborn.

whereas rejuvenation has a good story, i find the difficulty scaling in rejuvenation to be an utter nightmare. i think in the first half i did okay, but fights like angies, occasionally the rift fights (do not even get me STARTED with groudon because it would keep resting everytime its hp got down to low health or poisoned it, i don't remember the specifics but i don't know why my particular fight was harder compared to everyone else), and oh god. saki. i heard they revamped saki's at the very least, but some of those fights were just exceedingly difficult to the point of frustration then fun. angie's still takes the cake for me, my boyfriend was attempting to give me tips (he plays pokemon more seriously compared to me because he's a filthy showdown player lol) and every trick in the book he had was just ultimately countered. it's so easy to get soft locked because of how exceedingly difficult the game can get, not to mention that at a certain point enemy pokemon teams will start to have an excess amount of points invested into evs. like are you kidding me?! i don't even know if they had that in reborn, but there's more of an obligation to grind out evs and ivs in this game because of how absolutely fucked you can be in fights at times. and while they have easy methods of doing so it's still an unbearable ass grind going back and forth to do all this. i think i have more pokemon in rejuvenation then in reborn because of how much i have to prepare for because i don't want to get soft-locked.

it's been a while since i played, so maybe the difficulty has been scaled better. i love the story, genuinely, but i had to shelf it at some point because of the constant grinding i had to do with all my pokemon in preparation for each gym battle. i don't know, maybe i just need to play better.

overall, worth a short. lots of love is being put into the game quite evidently, and it's easier to get attached to the cast. while it can be fun at times, the frustration was just too much for me at times. definitely don't hesitate to take a break in between specific fights, and always, always prepare in advance.

for starters, i find the difficulty in this quite fun. i know there are ways to make the newer games difficult, that at the end of the day these are still games for children, but truthfully when i have replayed older games they still have that sense of challenge even when i'm older and more familiar with how the game goes. everything in the 3d era, while i don't doubt are good and have their own merits, just didn't have that spark anymore. is it just the fact that i've grown up? most likely, but i just felt like it was easy to turn my brain off in recent times when playing these games. i've probably stopped buying and anticipating the new pokemon games after usum, my brother had stopped after oras.

i don't even play particularly seriously. i prioritize favorites over meta. after mega evolutions and fairy types it felt like the developers were afraid to change the formula (but what i've seen of scarvio looks really cool as well as legends). if it ain't don't fix it, would make sense. and i wonder if that fear was instilled after the backlash of gen 5. but it feels stagnant. most likely due to utilizing the same development plan for the past few years even though their new games can no longer be properly polished within those constraints.

ramblings aside, here's where my point comes in, i find fields to be a wonderful mechanic and playing this gave me the same difficulty rush i had when facing whitney for the first time in soul silver. it gave a new type of meta to expand upon and had me using pokemon i've never used just in case they were useful. i can't speak for the rest of the game truthfully because i had stopped around the time i was locked under with titania, i know in my heart however that i had fun.

the story... i won't lie, it's edgy in the parts that i played. i heard it gets way better in the second half. i'll see if i change my mind the day i pick this up again. but i don't really have... a favorite or so. no character really stuck out to me. and the player character feels so distant from the story that i feel more like a bystander then part of it. you're just there. i think cain and victoria are supposed to be my friends and the group i start with but i kind of don't care that much about them, the villains, i think i only cared about the kids since i just wanted them to get out of there. the story was probably extraordinary when it first dropped since a lot of people wished for pokemon to take up darker topics. to me, i already think nintendo is capable of it with cases such as n, lillie, pokemon colosseum, etc. it's just on the subtle scale and not so put in your face. i don't think things need to be gorey or sexual in order to be considered dark in all honesty. but i'm sure the creators already recognize these past writing choices and have grown past them.

it's clearly a fan project with a lot of passion. i love that you start the game off with such a small pool of pokemon, and that the encounters you have with the 'best' ones are behind events far off that make you question if it's even worth getting them with the team you have assembled at that point. pachirisu and kricketune were such god damn carries for me and i typically never use them ever.

that being said, very fun as a game if you've been playing pokemon for a while. and i commend anyone being able to complete a fan game of one of nintendos stingiest properties. that's a lot of time and effort for something that can so easily recieve a ceast and desist. i say give it a shot for the gameplay, it's free after all.

the ost is fucking fire btw

absolutely phenomenal. a considerate lack of loose ends in the overall narrative that's fun with satisfying puzzle mechanics to complement it. has one of my favorite artstyles ever.

and there is a cute little dog worth playing for.

his name is missile if you cared.