[Pokemon Empyrean Review]

On 8/27/2020 at 7:41 PM, ErebusCartesius said:

I've played and beat the game for like... three times already (1st time legit without debug, 2nd time with debug, 3rd time playing the Edge of Eternity mod with debug, addtional creds to Specific) and I can't bring myself to enjoy it much so please allow me to give my own two pence about it. (it's light with spoilers, but i tried, ok?)

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

First off: Their fakeys were good; Wiseraph best mon. I loved my Wiseraph named Apocrypha from when I caught it as a Wispaur to the end, after I beat the champion with it. Their regional variants were kinda cool, but I kinda wish they added a bit more as opposed to very few, such as the Riolu line, Komala, Zubat line and Taillow line. But that's understandable given that they had pokes like data-types that are catchable in the postgame (which serves as regional variants too, just from a different time) and introduced a triple type gimmick to one pokemon. As far as custom megas go, they were pretty meh. Mega Incineroar's still the best one for me. Yes, some were removed because of the new fusion gimmick but I'll explain more soon.

 

Second of all, the characters. Blitz was a fun rival to fight against and I loved his character arc from the beginning to the end and he fits the typical a**hole rival turned reformed hero archetype kinda well.

Moira is your typical chill gen 3 onwards rival whom I wish was more involved in the story as opposed to only appearing as surprise and boss battles, or when she tries to stop me fighting against Blitz on the bridge. Why couldn't I pick her over Ashy (Fire/Dark leader) and Rita (normal/rock leader) during the Sylentia Heist? But nope, the game said no despite her rather limited screentime. The date with Blitz was pretty lacklustre and awkward whilst the date with Moira was very bittersweet and again, I wish I could have seen more of her since she leaves for Baltia to do community service after you beat Rayqyomi (where Rayquaza fuses with crazy lady).

The professor, if there are two words to describe them, it would be "ara ara" bc basically their entire appeal feels like exaggerated anime oneesama/okaasan to me. I wish I could battle them sometime in the future (if Sto decides to implement it at least) and that they have a battle sprite just somewhere in the data folder bc that would be really cool.

The game really wants me to think "ooh Ashy is best girl" but honestly, I feel that there is a lack of evidence (besides dating conversations) to prove that anyone would be best girl in this game. And I feel that the title is subjective to anyone who plays the game bc they might think Aprilia (Elite 4) is or maybe Aeris (Dragon/Flying leader) is as opposed to Ashy and exclusively Ashy.

You can date Aeris in the postgame but I feel that her date was kinda confusing. Yes, she's a kinky lady but she wasn't understood as well and the topics her character touches are pretty sensitive imo. I don't think they did Aeris justice in one of the endings and I wish that we got a second part to Aeris' date by getting her out of jail or bailing her out.

Crow was cool. I liked Crow. Cool dude.

(yeah I got busy analysing surface level details of dateable characters and ara ara arumondo)

 

I'm not putting story bc i feel like i'll repeat what op has said and yeah the story is confusing and bad weird, but let's hope version 2.0 will mitigate the incompleteness to some degree and put in all 9 ultimate items and all 8 shards of Arceus for us to collect. Oh and make every previously missable item buyable again as there were some items that were completely missable and i think it's my personal taste to dislike permanently missable items in RPGs that's makg me pretty salty about this but i think they did something similar in the FFVII remake so i guess permanent missables aren't a huge deal breaker but i'm a collector at heart so it disappoints me that the first future (the one where HAL is made captive) 

has a lot of permanent missables. And given that I'm someone who appreciates the worldbuilding aspect a lot, I wish I could read the Dantean Horizon or learn more about the Empyreans by visiting Zearth in the past as opposed to seeing it in Alia's flashback.

 

Thirdly, the one where a lot of my rambling will go, the mechanics of this game. oh they were not explained very well. Light and Data types are a recent phenomenon now? hmm but pokes like Amphy and Lanturn should have been innately light type lol. and also, fairy type exists as that "light type" so you've only made the type chart superfluous. Data has so many goddamn immunities and hitting a data type is pretty much the equivalent of hitting a wonder guard mon. thanks, i hate it now. Then there's Gold type. my days. you need to spend mindless hours just finding an optimal breeding pair or NG+ing the game to no end and omg it's just so much effort. look, I play fangames pretty casually without having to constantly reset the game or build competitive-ready mons but EoE came in clutch and introduced Vanilla mode. This made so much of the postgame nice and smooth since you need a whole team of 5GP mons to get anywhere in postgame which is too much grinding to put into a fangame, let alone having the perfect EV spread, nature and near-perfect IVs on your entire team. Then there's custom megas, pretty much a fangame staple which i'm sure most of us are accustomed to. Then there's fusion mons. Kinda respect the dev's choice of the three but imo megas should have done them fine and i think fusions should be done with the future trio as well as a possible data type mon. But I don't like that if you defeat another person's fusion mon, that doesn't end the battle immediately as it does, say, if you are beaten- which makes the game fundamentally unfair and counterintuitive but what's stopping people lol. I agree with op on the whole "mechanics not explained well" since you have way too many gimmicks to work with. Mutant mons, boss mons, fusion mons, empyreans, BS mons, amplifiers, nullifiers, shields, different fantasy races, GP, JoJo references, the lot of it. Having a lot of these gimmicks rolled into one game will make the game harder to grab the attention of the player, makes the game a lot less fun and it just leaves a lot of holes in the story and worldbuilding. Oh and it can also lead to game balance issues as well since it leaves very limited team compositions to actually beat the game with. yes, you could switch with the mons you have in your box, but I don't think that fantastic story-driven games like Reborn or Rejuv are worthy points of comparison for this game.

 

Leaving me with an overall conclusion: it's alright. mid tier at best. the balance of it goes frayed and messed up if GP is on (sorry op, i just think some mechanics are just filled in for the sake of being filled in). I also agree with OP with how the story and design choices are poor, i mean most of the game is just furret. and BS power creep. Fusion was cool for a time but i'll be honest it was kinda underwhelming, especially if you get too carried away and you get taken out. I personally think that the base game is best played with debug mode for the sake of experimenting with new teams without having to constantly grind and spend exorbitant amounts of money to Sygnals and that old man running blisseys and mech blisseys. The reason I'm going to call it a kitchen sink fangame is because of new plot points and mechanics getting chucked in throughout the game, adding excessive complication without adding more depth. The game was mostly a showcase of which mechanic gives you a harder time beating the game and laughs at you because you cannot use the same magnitude of BS they can.
 

 

After the end of a really long essay on why Empyrean meh, ping me if there are any inconsistencies within the statements I have made as constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. @Ya Gorl, the props go to you for starting this thread and thanks for giving players like myself a bit of a platform to talk about why Pokémon Empyrean is Pokémon Empyrean. Sorry for the ping in advance ;(

How do you get debug?

 

[Pokemon Fan Game Recommendations [Community WIP]]

Im trying to find some good pokemon fan games. Good ones too. So if anyone would give me suggestions please