My feedback on Rejuvenation

[LucidRain]

Hello everyone! Name's Pigeon, long time lurker and got introduced to Rejuvenation by a friend a while back. Binged on it and have completed up to the end of V9.

I must say, I really enjoyed playing the game and I can see a lot of time and effort has put into this. Though I can't say I'm an expert in fan-games and in no way think I can match the quality that the Devs can produce, I've got a few things to say about Rejuvenation, both good and bad.

Err, and spoiler warning too.

 

First of all, the aesthetics. I must say, I am pretty impressed by the pixel art designs. All of the characters look natural both over-world and battle sprites, and the music, sprites and other little details such as shaking screens and flashes really make for a immersive experience and hooks people in the story. I especially like how the artists handled the blizzard and action in the Frost Dimension - the snow, crumbling tower and the explosions at the end brought out the desolation and power of the angry ice lady. There were some derpy times where the game glitched and decided to throw pixels all over the place, but otherwise the game's aesthetic design make for a nice support.

 

Secondly, difficulty. The difficulty curve in Rejuvenation is handled rather nicely. Venam doesn't pose too much of a challenge to deter the newcomers, but still gives a nasty jab to people who think on main game difficulty. The natural curve of difficulty of slowly learning the ropes like field effects are consistent throughout the game, and this is assisted by anti-grinding like level caps and breeders. The game is also not only about having the biggest numbers, and contains fields effects which allows unique strategies that are mostly slanted to the boss but still poses a fair chance to the player too. There are some difficulty spikes like Angie who spams Cold Truth, but for the most part the natural progression of the difficulty is handled well.

 

Thirdly, game mechanics and features. The vast amount of side quests is what impressed me - even more so, the fact that the side quests interacted with the main plot-line and had their own little arcs over several stages of the side quest. It made the world feel like one organic world with characters interacting fluidly, rather than just a bunch of misfits on one big quest with a bunch of small quests from a bunch of random strangers. And the Help Centers were a fantastic way to allow the players to keep track of the side quests and complete them in progression.

 

Fourthly, the characters. The characters are all quite developed and each have their own unique motives and personalities. When I was playing through, I could understand why Venam would steal the Charizard, or Ren want to play hero so badly. The game kind of has a LOT of characters, and though the main characters are definitely Venam, Melia and Player, the huge cast of side characters sometimes left me confused on where I had seen the character and what relevance they had in the previous encounters. It might be just a personal preference, but fewer side characters or just occasional reminders on who they were would be good.

 

Finally, the plot. I've said lots of good things about the game before, but this is where Rejuvenation stumbles on. Individually, the small plot arcs are quite sound and have their own sense of closure. But the progressive lack of explanation for a lot of the mysteries that goes around in Rejuvenation made me feel quite confused and alienated. First, we had the question of who is Melia/Marianette? Throughout the whole story we don't quite get an explanation for who she is and what significance she has. Then we get characters kind of dropping off their own plotlines like the Side Quest 'battle me plz' lady and Nim/Lorna. We have Madam X and Crescent who are vital characters and yet we don't know their motivations and actions. We have Saki's amnesia, the fake Player, Puppet Master and people turning to stone still unresolved. Some mysteries are good, but left too long unresolved it can create confusion, frustration and alienation. This is forgivable for now, since the game isn't quite complete yet. But the Devs have quite a lot of questions to resolve in the upcoming installments.

 

There is also a problem with the player's role in the story. The story is undoubtedly settled around Melia. The cover has her, the artwork has her, all the main characters have a link to her, Team Xen wants her, the team of time travellers recruited her, she has some kind of psychic power... and obviously she has had a lot of character building. She also drives most of the game plot, leading the group of heroes into battle. But where does the player fit into all this? Sure, they go around fighting people and beating gyms, but so could anyone else. The player could have easily been replaced by Melia herself, or not been there at all. Whatever the player does accomplish, like stopping bombs or finding the Rift book is marginalised and never really accredited to the player. The question of 'what makes the player so special' isn't really extrapolated and the player is mostly just a bystander or side-kick that occasionally jumps in, defeats goons and grunts and the rest of the plot flows on without them. This does improve a little by the end of V9, but still could do with a lot more work.

 

Overall, the game is enjoyable for its gameplay and dynamic world, with lots of different battles to enjoy and different quests to play through. However, the game does stumble on its story aspect and could do with a bit more player integration.

 

All of this is of course just an opinions of an observer, and none of this is really conclusive, especially since the game isn't technically finished yet.

I do sincerely hope that the Devs do well in their development!

 

~Pigeon

[Daniel Blackworth]

KAAALLVVVAAAA!

 

I mostly agree with what you've said. I love Rejuvenation for those reasons as well, and while I agree that there is an issue with the plot due to there being a lot of unanswered questions and hanging plot points, but I believe it will be resolved in future editions, so I'll just be looking forward to it.

 

Anyhow, more power to Jan and his future dev team!

[FairFamily]

Funny I kinda dislike the difficulty in rejuvenation. To me it feels incredibly unfair. I mean you get (overleveled) legendaries left and right slapped in your face: Kyogre, groudon, Yveltal, Giratina, Mewtwo, ... . On top of that you have the OP custom moves (sticky web with damage) which you don't get or can even see its description. Some of the fields (mostly the fields exclusive to rejuvenation) are incredibly one-sided (type-effectiveness alteration for instance). To top it off some fights get free permanent weather because why not? All this hides the facts that how unoriginal the teams sometimes are. Valerie's mons basically have tidal wave,ice beam and a thunder move in their movepool because why not. Amber's team is completly overshadowed by her fire moves that wreck almost everything even her own team.

 

Got that rant out of my system. Difficulty aside I aggree with most of the rest of your points. The players role however is in this story reletavely big considering he/she/xe is a silent protagonist. Most of these characters tend to be merely an outsider to the story. Rejuvenation made the MC a part of the story, though he is not the center of the story. It's not the greatest involvement in the story but it is fine.

[Dreamy]

Interesting. I personally really like the sense of mystery from all of the story and stuff because there's so many little bits of information scattered around to find but you get the feeling that it all fits together and that you can and will find out what it all means, And I love trying to piece together and solve the puzzle. I also get the feeling that the players importance will increase in the later part of the story, based on the 'interceptor' thing from the puppet master and the fact that Madame X obviously has a plan for us. And to a degree I find it nice to not actually have the story be completely player-centric

[Nyarth]

I agree with you on all of this! The game is amazing in the visuals and soundtrack department, which adds so much immersion in the game because it carries personality and lacks stiffness, which is a huge problem in many other fangames.

On the characters, yeah they need a big amount of work as they end up affecting the plot as well. The V9 update shows that they're being worked on, so there's more room for improvement.

The Melia thing is something that I think really needs to be fixed though. There is nothing wrong with non player-centric games and nothing wrong with having a game that also focuses a lot on another character... but literally everything that matters revolves around her, and it's far from being subtle. Since it's so apparent, it really ends up putting so many people off since Melia isn't well-developed enough for the player to care about all the drama surrounding her. This ends up stunting the impact of many events in the game, as so many of those events are about Melia.

And it really sucks, as I like Melia . I like her team, I love her design, and the flickers of genuine personality we've seen from her. The only way I can see fixing the listed problems is either axing her role a bit (which is unlikely as the game is plot driven and most likely already written), or clean her character up a lot so the Melia-centricness is less deterring to the game.