Playing through it for the first time, Desolation blew me away from every direction. Now that I'm done with my playthrough and not concerned with spoilers anymore, I'm excited to review all of the facets of Desolation that I enjoyed.
Firstly, the dialogue's polish jumped out in the first few minutes of playing. From about five lines each I wanted to know more about Ava, Scarlett, and then Amelia. In about two lines I wanted to push Connor off the side of the ship, and Shiv and Kuiki piqued my curiosity even faster. Good writing is unusual in fangames, so I was immediately committed to playing this game all the way through, before I had any idea what quality the gameplay would be at.
Acclimating to the battles turned out to be quite the journey itself. In Keneph Forest and the village, the initial battles were pretty manageable, so Shiv smashing me with Skill Link Tail Slap was quite the surprise. I grouchily conceded that running away from every wild encounter probably wouldn't go so well, gained a few levels with my Pancham, refused to actually train what I considered to be a temporary teammate in Grubbin, beat Shiv, and moved on. I'd just have to take the difficulty level slightly more seriously and I'd be fine. Or so I believed, right up until the battle against Connor. Over the course of a dozen crushing defeats, my team went from a Pancham not at the level cap plus a few untrained Pokemon to a leveled-up team of six capable of beating Connor. This was the point where I should've realized that the battles were being designed with a good grasp on high-level competitive Pokemon tactics. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't until Aderyn's terrain blocked my attempt to set Stealth Rocks that it truly sunk in. From then on I looked forward to each big battle as a well-crafted challenge that I'd need to outwork and outsmart.
As for the non-battle aspects of gameplay, I grew to be mostly impressed by the scope of the map design, though some aspects were a bit frustrating. Each key settlement had a unique feel to it, with Blackview in particular being a daunting scramble of activity. While Blackview's hustle and bustle was great from a mood standpoint, needing to take careful notes to keep track of important locations in the city wasn't pleasant. The biggest difficulty was the lack of a more direct path cutting left to right through the middle of the city. Perhaps there was a winding path to take, but with so many dead ends on each side, I always ended up trudging to the top or bottom of the city to cross over. The other area that I had mixed feelings about was Silver Rise. Both the cave and forest sections were very in-depth, so taking them on back-to-back with only a brief interval felt exhausting.
When it came to quests and puzzles, the non-puzzle sidequests were probably my favorites on the whole, with the ranger quests having similar levels of involvement as the main plot itself. The branching quests in the dreamscape were also especially well done. As for the puzzles, I mostly preferred the mandatory puzzles over the optional ones. For the colored piece quests, more than once I had to look up a video solution and promptly found that I had missed using the exactly correct method by one step. However, I did find the main story puzzle to get into the North Cellia Fox base to be a short but extremely satisfying puzzle.
For lack of a better time to mention it, only one part of the game actively bothered me. Perhaps this was specific to me, but some of the flashing effects used were at times physically painful on my eyes, be it the red flashes from walking around with a poisoned Pokemon or the white flashes from some story moments, your own Pokemon being sent out, and random encounters. This issue was relatively minor and certainly didn't stop me from enjoying the game considerably, but I'm curious if anyone else felt the same.
Returning to Desolation's numerous positive aspects, I'm not a person with much grasp for what goes into making good sprites, but I did immediately like each of the 4 player-character options. Rarely do I spend longer than 10 seconds picking the design I prefer and getting started, but in this case I regretted that the other 3 designs didn't belong to separate characters. Even still, it wasn't until past the second gym when I started to think about how consistently good the spriting was in the game. While the different expressions in the dialogue boxes for each important character were great touches, seeing the full view of characters like Amelia and Tristan when battling them for the first time is what made their designs into personal favorites and brought home the effort put into them.
By that point I had to shake my head and wonder how on earth someone could make a game with a striking story, great map and quest designs, challenging and thoughtful battles, and stellar character art to boot. I didn't expect at all when I started clicking around this forum that there was actually a team of 3 developers. It all made perfect sense that the story, battles, and sprites were each primarily handled by different folks, and I'm really impressed with all the hard work y'all have put in. To Caz, I hope the passion for this fantastic story stays strong. It's been created so vividly that I deeply look forward to seeing the next installment and one day the end of the story. To the whole team of Caz, Ruby, and Posty, you guys have done a tremendous job making a beautifully well-rounded game, and I very much hope you continue to work so well together.
PS: the team I used to beat the game! (Spoiler warning for details on opposing trainers.)
Spoiler
The only rule was that I wanted to stick to Gen 4-7 mons. Personally I like these six a lot, but I can't recommend this team for others to use. It's balanced typewise, but the Pokemon are pretty middling even with lots of save-scumming to get preferable IVs, natures, and abilities, and several of the mons aren't available early on. Though I'll note that the whole run was done on Set mode, so perhaps if you prefer a bit less difficulty and play on Shift, this team would be stronger?
This poor mon wasn't super useful in any gym battle until Aaron, but at least it showed up in other battles. I definitely wish I had tried harder to get better bulk IVs. Maybe Hyper Training will be introduced in a future update?
[Lvl 70 Delphox @ Charcoal, Bold, Blaze] ; [0/11, 0/19, 0/16, 252/18, 4/12, 252/31] ; [Flamethrower, Psychic, Grass Knot, Mystical Fire]
One of the two MVP mons. Not great early, but really carried as soon as it became a Delphox. It used to be itemless Magician, which was sometimes neat, but Aderyn's Mega Pidgeot OHKO'ing all 5 of the other team members made me change. The extra firepower from Blaze and Charcoal was really necessary to oneshot the Pidgeot, so I used an Ability Capsule to beat Aderyn at the Fight Club. Funnily, it was actually much more possible to beat Aderyn without relying on Blaze in the double battle, since if you set it up perfectly and have two mons out that can kill the Pidgeot, it can only outspeed and murk one of them at a time.
[Lvl 70 Floatzel @ Expert Belt, Adamant, Water Veil] ; [0/12, 252/31, 4/17, 0/14, 0/6, 252/21] ; [Aqua Tail, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang, Crunch]
No Aqua Tail until level 46 made this a bad mon for a long time. Trying to get by with King's Rock Tail Slap in the mean time wasn't fun. Water Veil made switching into fire types pretty stress free, so that at least was a selling point.
[Lvl 70 Alolan Sandslash @ Leftovers, Quirky, Slush Rush] ; [0/20, 252/16, 4/7, 0/10, 0/17, 252/25] ; [Icicle Spear, Iron Head, Shadow Claw, Swords Dance]
This mon was decently reliable early, but got worse over time. More and more mons in the late game had ground/fighting/fire coverage and dragons were pretty rare. It did help a lot with fairies though. Maybe I should've tried Icy Rock with Hail over Shadow Claw? It was actually Snow Cloak and not Slush Rush for most of the game until I finally decided to use an Ability Capsule for kicks, but maybe I'll try out the Hail sweeper set. It'll probably need to be in a future playthrough though, since only Sandshrew gets Hail by level-up and there's no TM for it. Limiting learnsets for stone evolutions is super dumb, Game Freak.
[Lvl 70 Sawsbuck @ Big Root, Naive, Sap Sipper] ; [0/25, 252/16, 4/25, 0/19, 0/9, 252/26] ; [Horn Leech, Return, Jump Kick, Megahorn]
This mon was decent, but not fast enough or bulky enough to help much against Emily, which was a big downer. Big Root Horn Leech was pretty clutch at times though.
[Lvl 70 Gliscor @ Toxic Orb, Naive, Poison Heal] ; [8/20, 0/31, 248/16, 0/20, 0/6, 252/15] ; [Facade, Sky Uppercut, Acrobatics, Swords Dance]
The other team MVP. The 8 HP EV's for a 20 IV Gliscor at level 70 gave 200 HP exactly, which was important because HP divisible by 8 gives maximum Poison Heal recovery. It was 28 HP EV's at level 60, but I fiddled with it each time the level cap changed to keep it divisible by 8. Gliscor still carried, but no ground move for it was kinda sad. I get why an Earthquake TM was too strong given the balancing goals, but I wish the Bulldoze TM had been available.
Temporary teammates used for Gym Leader battles:
vs Connor: Pancham/Braixen/Charjabug/Poliwag/Numel/Pansage (No Buizel, because I hadn't figured out Rogue Pokemon yet.)
vs Aderyn: Pangoro/Braixen/Floatzel/Charjabug/Lairon/Graveler
vs Tristan: Pangoro/Delphox/Floatzel/Alolan Sandslash/Aggron/Luxray (with Intimidate)
vs Emily: Pangoro/Delphox/Floatzel/Alolan Sandslash/Saswbuck/Piloswine (with Thick Fat and Amnesia)
By the time I faced Rosetta I had the full team and had used the manor to EV train, so they were actually good, but for the first 4 gyms the temporary teammates were better than the actual regulars, sadly. The fights all ended up tough because of that, especially against Aderyn and Emily, but with trial and error they could get the job done. Shoutouts to beating Emily's Rotom-Wash by PP stalling Hydro Pump via potion spamming Amnesia-boosted Piloswine, then switching to Water Veil Floatzel on Will-o-Wisp and back to Piloswine on Volt Switch repeatedly until Wisp was also out of PP. You do what you gotta do.
Pokemon Desolation Episode 5.1
in Discussions
Posted · Edited by BearDown
Playing through it for the first time, Desolation blew me away from every direction. Now that I'm done with my playthrough and not concerned with spoilers anymore, I'm excited to review all of the facets of Desolation that I enjoyed.
Firstly, the dialogue's polish jumped out in the first few minutes of playing. From about five lines each I wanted to know more about Ava, Scarlett, and then Amelia. In about two lines I wanted to push Connor off the side of the ship, and Shiv and Kuiki piqued my curiosity even faster. Good writing is unusual in fangames, so I was immediately committed to playing this game all the way through, before I had any idea what quality the gameplay would be at.
Acclimating to the battles turned out to be quite the journey itself. In Keneph Forest and the village, the initial battles were pretty manageable, so Shiv smashing me with Skill Link Tail Slap was quite the surprise. I grouchily conceded that running away from every wild encounter probably wouldn't go so well, gained a few levels with my Pancham, refused to actually train what I considered to be a temporary teammate in Grubbin, beat Shiv, and moved on. I'd just have to take the difficulty level slightly more seriously and I'd be fine. Or so I believed, right up until the battle against Connor. Over the course of a dozen crushing defeats, my team went from a Pancham not at the level cap plus a few untrained Pokemon to a leveled-up team of six capable of beating Connor. This was the point where I should've realized that the battles were being designed with a good grasp on high-level competitive Pokemon tactics. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't until Aderyn's terrain blocked my attempt to set Stealth Rocks that it truly sunk in. From then on I looked forward to each big battle as a well-crafted challenge that I'd need to outwork and outsmart.
As for the non-battle aspects of gameplay, I grew to be mostly impressed by the scope of the map design, though some aspects were a bit frustrating. Each key settlement had a unique feel to it, with Blackview in particular being a daunting scramble of activity. While Blackview's hustle and bustle was great from a mood standpoint, needing to take careful notes to keep track of important locations in the city wasn't pleasant. The biggest difficulty was the lack of a more direct path cutting left to right through the middle of the city. Perhaps there was a winding path to take, but with so many dead ends on each side, I always ended up trudging to the top or bottom of the city to cross over. The other area that I had mixed feelings about was Silver Rise. Both the cave and forest sections were very in-depth, so taking them on back-to-back with only a brief interval felt exhausting.
When it came to quests and puzzles, the non-puzzle sidequests were probably my favorites on the whole, with the ranger quests having similar levels of involvement as the main plot itself. The branching quests in the dreamscape were also especially well done. As for the puzzles, I mostly preferred the mandatory puzzles over the optional ones. For the colored piece quests, more than once I had to look up a video solution and promptly found that I had missed using the exactly correct method by one step. However, I did find the main story puzzle to get into the North Cellia Fox base to be a short but extremely satisfying puzzle.
For lack of a better time to mention it, only one part of the game actively bothered me. Perhaps this was specific to me, but some of the flashing effects used were at times physically painful on my eyes, be it the red flashes from walking around with a poisoned Pokemon or the white flashes from some story moments, your own Pokemon being sent out, and random encounters. This issue was relatively minor and certainly didn't stop me from enjoying the game considerably, but I'm curious if anyone else felt the same.
Returning to Desolation's numerous positive aspects, I'm not a person with much grasp for what goes into making good sprites, but I did immediately like each of the 4 player-character options. Rarely do I spend longer than 10 seconds picking the design I prefer and getting started, but in this case I regretted that the other 3 designs didn't belong to separate characters. Even still, it wasn't until past the second gym when I started to think about how consistently good the spriting was in the game. While the different expressions in the dialogue boxes for each important character were great touches, seeing the full view of characters like Amelia and Tristan when battling them for the first time is what made their designs into personal favorites and brought home the effort put into them.
By that point I had to shake my head and wonder how on earth someone could make a game with a striking story, great map and quest designs, challenging and thoughtful battles, and stellar character art to boot. I didn't expect at all when I started clicking around this forum that there was actually a team of 3 developers. It all made perfect sense that the story, battles, and sprites were each primarily handled by different folks, and I'm really impressed with all the hard work y'all have put in. To Caz, I hope the passion for this fantastic story stays strong. It's been created so vividly that I deeply look forward to seeing the next installment and one day the end of the story. To the whole team of Caz, Ruby, and Posty, you guys have done a tremendous job making a beautifully well-rounded game, and I very much hope you continue to work so well together.
PS: the team I used to beat the game! (Spoiler warning for details on opposing trainers.)
The only rule was that I wanted to stick to Gen 4-7 mons. Personally I like these six a lot, but I can't recommend this team for others to use. It's balanced typewise, but the Pokemon are pretty middling even with lots of save-scumming to get preferable IVs, natures, and abilities, and several of the mons aren't available early on. Though I'll note that the whole run was done on Set mode, so perhaps if you prefer a bit less difficulty and play on Shift, this team would be stronger?
[Lvl 70 Pangoro @ Darkinium Z, Docile, Iron Fist] ; [0/0, 252/21, 4/9, 0/24, 0/9, 252/22] ; [Sky Uppercut, Crunch, Bullet Punch, Parting Shot]
This poor mon wasn't super useful in any gym battle until Aaron, but at least it showed up in other battles. I definitely wish I had tried harder to get better bulk IVs. Maybe Hyper Training will be introduced in a future update?
[Lvl 70 Delphox @ Charcoal, Bold, Blaze] ; [0/11, 0/19, 0/16, 252/18, 4/12, 252/31] ; [Flamethrower, Psychic, Grass Knot, Mystical Fire]
One of the two MVP mons. Not great early, but really carried as soon as it became a Delphox. It used to be itemless Magician, which was sometimes neat, but Aderyn's Mega Pidgeot OHKO'ing all 5 of the other team members made me change. The extra firepower from Blaze and Charcoal was really necessary to oneshot the Pidgeot, so I used an Ability Capsule to beat Aderyn at the Fight Club. Funnily, it was actually much more possible to beat Aderyn without relying on Blaze in the double battle, since if you set it up perfectly and have two mons out that can kill the Pidgeot, it can only outspeed and murk one of them at a time.
[Lvl 70 Floatzel @ Expert Belt, Adamant, Water Veil] ; [0/12, 252/31, 4/17, 0/14, 0/6, 252/21] ; [Aqua Tail, Aqua Jet, Ice Fang, Crunch]
No Aqua Tail until level 46 made this a bad mon for a long time. Trying to get by with King's Rock Tail Slap in the mean time wasn't fun. Water Veil made switching into fire types pretty stress free, so that at least was a selling point.
[Lvl 70 Alolan Sandslash @ Leftovers, Quirky, Slush Rush] ; [0/20, 252/16, 4/7, 0/10, 0/17, 252/25] ; [Icicle Spear, Iron Head, Shadow Claw, Swords Dance]
This mon was decently reliable early, but got worse over time. More and more mons in the late game had ground/fighting/fire coverage and dragons were pretty rare. It did help a lot with fairies though. Maybe I should've tried Icy Rock with Hail over Shadow Claw? It was actually Snow Cloak and not Slush Rush for most of the game until I finally decided to use an Ability Capsule for kicks, but maybe I'll try out the Hail sweeper set. It'll probably need to be in a future playthrough though, since only Sandshrew gets Hail by level-up and there's no TM for it. Limiting learnsets for stone evolutions is super dumb, Game Freak.
[Lvl 70 Sawsbuck @ Big Root, Naive, Sap Sipper] ; [0/25, 252/16, 4/25, 0/19, 0/9, 252/26] ; [Horn Leech, Return, Jump Kick, Megahorn]
This mon was decent, but not fast enough or bulky enough to help much against Emily, which was a big downer. Big Root Horn Leech was pretty clutch at times though.
[Lvl 70 Gliscor @ Toxic Orb, Naive, Poison Heal] ; [8/20, 0/31, 248/16, 0/20, 0/6, 252/15] ; [Facade, Sky Uppercut, Acrobatics, Swords Dance]
The other team MVP. The 8 HP EV's for a 20 IV Gliscor at level 70 gave 200 HP exactly, which was important because HP divisible by 8 gives maximum Poison Heal recovery. It was 28 HP EV's at level 60, but I fiddled with it each time the level cap changed to keep it divisible by 8. Gliscor still carried, but no ground move for it was kinda sad. I get why an Earthquake TM was too strong given the balancing goals, but I wish the Bulldoze TM had been available.
Temporary teammates used for Gym Leader battles:
vs Connor: Pancham/Braixen/Charjabug/Poliwag/Numel/Pansage (No Buizel, because I hadn't figured out Rogue Pokemon yet.)
vs Aderyn: Pangoro/Braixen/Floatzel/Charjabug/Lairon/Graveler
vs Tristan: Pangoro/Delphox/Floatzel/Alolan Sandslash/Aggron/Luxray (with Intimidate)
vs Emily: Pangoro/Delphox/Floatzel/Alolan Sandslash/Saswbuck/Piloswine (with Thick Fat and Amnesia)
By the time I faced Rosetta I had the full team and had used the manor to EV train, so they were actually good, but for the first 4 gyms the temporary teammates were better than the actual regulars, sadly. The fights all ended up tough because of that, especially against Aderyn and Emily, but with trial and error they could get the job done. Shoutouts to beating Emily's Rotom-Wash by PP stalling Hydro Pump via potion spamming Amnesia-boosted Piloswine, then switching to Water Veil Floatzel on Will-o-Wisp and back to Piloswine on Volt Switch repeatedly until Wisp was also out of PP. You do what you gotta do.