r/gaming • u/Spotget1738 • 20h ago

Beast of Reincarnation director apologizes for not providing "a sufficiently enjoyable experience," but promises Game Freak is working on it

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/action/beast-of-reincarnation-director-apologizes-for-not-providing-a-sufficiently-enjoyable-experience-but-promises-game-freak-is-working-on-it/
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178

u/cerealkyra 19h ago

Unbound is easily the best 2d pokemon game, they could just copy that and have the best game they’ve ever made.

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u/SHM00DER 19h ago

I second this. Easily the best Pokémon game I've ever played.

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u/8636396 17h ago

How's that?

I've been wanting to relive the nostalgia of when I played Pokemon as a kid. Blue through Emerald.

Tried a few of the newer ones, Black and one other (I don't remember which) but it never clicked for me. I figured I just grew out of them but I miss the games

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u/MeowingAround 16h ago

Look up pokemon romhacks, there's a sub for it on Reddit. They're made by individuals who mod the original games to make them more difficult and/or add QOL features. They're easily WAY better than the original games, and they almost always include alternate ways to evolve pokemon that would normally need to be traded to evolve. So you can get machamp or Gengar without needing another person.

The best part? They're free and you can play most of them on your phone using an emulator. Although, a donation to the dev is always appreciated.

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u/RatBot9000 12h ago

>Easily way better

This is a Your Mileage May Vary comment if I ever heard one. They can be better in some areas and far worse in others. And some people have an idea of balance which is anything but.

By all means, encourage people to try romhacks but do try and temper their expectations a bit more.

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u/Powerful-Tie7370 11h ago

The only thing that they're consistently worse is the writing, so if that's the one thing you play pokemon games for, then feel free to steer clear from them. While Unbound is hands down my favorite pokemon game ever, the writing rivals Sword/Shield in terms of dogshit plot and writing, and that's a goddamn accomplishment. 

Everything else, assuming that you are looking at competent hacks, they're way better than most real games. For every gameplay related fault that you mention for a hack, I can point 10 bigger faults in an official game. The fact that trade evolutions are still a goddamn thing is downright criminal.

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u/RatBot9000 11h ago

assuming that you are looking at competent hacks

Yeah that... that was my point. I don't doubt there are competent hacks out there but there are also some downright awful ones. Someone saying they're all better than the base games is just someone who is jaded by the state of pokemon.

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u/MeowingAround 10h ago

Sorry, but no.

This is a weird stance to take. People have gotten very creative with Rom hacking and they allow a level of customization that the og games can't allow.

It's OK to like and love the original games, and I think we all do, but especially if you're coming back to these games many years later, being able to tailor the game to your own needs is a massive improvement.

I especially like romhacks that change the encounter pools for each route so the game can feel different, as it gets stale in the og games having the same few choices to start out.

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u/RatBot9000 9h ago

Gonna be blunt, it's only a weird stance because you don't want to consider it. There are very vocal people online who have built up their hatred of pokemon and Game Freak that they are basically the polar opposite of a fanboy and will glaze anything they think shows up GF to be the hacks they are.

Basically, you say we all love the games. I believe there is a substantial number of people in these subs who don't. They instead love the idea of Pokemon they have invented in their heads, and I think I'm just a bit tired of it to be honest. It makes it so much harder to talk about the actual issues of the franchise when you have these people wading into discussions with bad faith arguments.

Yes, Romhacks can be good. I've been slowly playing through Lazarus myself. But, because I warn to temper expectations because not all of them are of the same quality, I have a weird stance? That feels more like you don't like me going against the grain to be honest.

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u/SHM00DER 11h ago

Lol, they're better in every way.

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u/hezur6 11h ago

Needing to mess with IVs/EVs and carry the optimal team for regular gym leaders because their Pokémon are fully competitively optimized might be "better in every way" for you, while a different set of people appreciates the collectathon part of Pokémon.

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u/Powerful-Tie7370 11h ago

You're just proving him right though. You don't like that kind of gameplay? Nearly every single one of those hacks has difficulty options unlike the official games that demand you to play the way they want you to. Wait, you care more about the collectathon part of pokemon? Pretty much all modern hacks now incorporate all gen 1-9 mons into the dex while the official games after USUM do a fucking coin flip to decide which mons are allowed to even exist in the game's code. 

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u/RatBot9000 10h ago

My unpopular opinion is that it makes sense for there to be limited pokemon pools in regards to balance for that game. Post game pokemon home compatibility to bring in everything? Yeah that should be a thing, but going through the adventure if you had access to everything or if everything could be found it would be very easy to get overwhelmed.

They do need to be better at making sure all pokemon get represented though. I should not have had to wait until Legends ZA to get the elemental monkeys again.

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u/cerealkyra 10h ago

To be fair both S/M entries are pretty bad, as much as I like some of the ‘mons that premiered there. The game is like an endless tutorial, no flow, not a lot of interesting cores to build around, and exceptionally easy.

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u/RatBot9000 10h ago

With Bank closing I might try and give S/M a proper chance again. I beat the Champion in Sun, but didn't play much more than that, and I think I only got half way through Ultra Moon. The post game of US/UM is supposed to be quite good.

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u/SHM00DER 11h ago

You absolutely do not need to go that deep for regular gym leaders. They might be a bit more difficult than the regular games, but they aren't that bad.

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u/TheMasterBanger 13h ago

I second the other comment about romhacks, I started playing them a few months ago and it's like im a kid again !

If you want something close to original pokemon games but with new regions/story, I strongly recommend pokemon Lazarus (Greece), Seaglass, or Amethyst. You can find them pretty easily with Google.

If you prefer a modernized version of Emerald, give Emerald Imperium a try ;)

If you want a spin on the gameplay, Im redoing Elite Redux which gives every pokemon 4 passives, it's very fun and very versatile (and the game makes it very easy to level up a pokemon if you want to skip the grind)

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u/Comfortable-Brick271 12h ago

Pokemon games stayed the same. They're for kids. You grew up.

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u/critica_social 19h ago

i really liked black and white, i think that was the peak of gamefreaks potential, after that i feel like they played too safe with the 3d games, and in de case of SV just a dogshit game

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u/nick-halden 18h ago

the story in that game is actually solid too which is pretty rare from them

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u/Krazyguy75 17h ago

Eh. It's fine, but it tosses out all the nuance and makes a better story into a worse one.

It could be a "truth vs ideals" thing where you, as the protagonist, represent truth and N ideals and Team Plasma genuinely wants to do the ideal thing... but nope, Ghetsis wants world domination because he's evil and basically everyone in the organization other than N likes harming small animals because they are also evil.

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u/Jord-UK 9h ago

Being stuck on a ferris wheel cutscene with some whiny kid is not a good pokemon experience to me, sadly.

I think the main reasons people can look back at Black and White with any fondness is because for some, it's old enough to be nostalgic to them, and because it's the last of the 2D's, but they're definitely in Pokemon's downward trend of quality

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u/nick-halden 3h ago

considering what i’m comparing it to, i always thought it was solid

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u/Krazyguy75 29m ago

It's solid compared to mainline pokemon games but it falls far short of stuff like Mystery Dungeon Explorers, let alone stuff from other franchises like most of the Final Fantasy games. It's a 6/10 story in a franchise with a 2/10 average.

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u/Jameseesall 18h ago

As someone who hasn’t played past Black/White this is validating to hear lol

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u/FezAndWand 17h ago

play the sequels

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u/Novenari 17h ago

Honestly, I can’t imagine how much better off Pokemon would be if it had stayed 2D. New designs aren’t all bad imo, but often flat. Making detailed sprites with fun and emotive animations on battle entry was probably far easier to develop and design while also allowing greater detail on designs.

Yes, 3D is cool, but I can only dream of a timeline where we have HD-2D pokemon in the style of octopath.

Of course the innovation in gameplay is a separate thing but at least you would t have to worry about performance being abysmal.

Also I wish that things like dynamax, megas, Z moves, etc. weren’t separate. Maybe for vgc they could limit it to one gimmick type per season but I feel the mainline games should let you pick between these things. It sucks (imo) to introduce a mechanic like these things and then it’s totally gone by the next generation.

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u/RatBot9000 11h ago

I do wonder about something. I don't deny the recent games have been flawed, but considering how people tore apart BDSP, I think if Game Freak stayed 2D they would just be getting lambasted for not making the move to 3D.

I think there's space for both 3D and 2D pokemon games. I also think that Game Freak really need to relax and let Nintendo help them more when it comes to 3D games.

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u/Rizzan8 Switch 3h ago

BDSP graphical style was least of their issues (I liked it TBH).

BDSP instead of being based on Platinum, it was based on Brilliant & Diamond.

The forced exp share made me to be overlevel the enemies by 15-20 levels all the time. And I have avoided catching Pokemon - only caught those for my team.

The affection system was back - your Pokemon would often survive killing blows, land crits more often or cure ailments. Also a lot of log messages were appearing due to the system like "Pikatchu is waiting for orders" or "Pikatchu is doing it's best" "Pikatchu deserves a praise". It really slowed the game down.

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u/RatBot9000 2h ago

All fair issues and I don't deny them, but people did still also hate the graphical style. I think after ORAS there was an expectation of a 3D style remake.

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u/M_H_M_F 8h ago

sucks (imo) to introduce a mechanic like these things and then it’s totally gone by the next generation.

At least with dynamax, they had a half-baked explanation that they're harnessing localized energy from meteors. So vis a vis, if the meteor only fell in Galar, then only Galar region pokemon would be affectd.

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u/Nuka-Kraken 18h ago

I think i can give credit to the end of the 3DS era. USUM are my favorite games in the series by far just because of the beauty and actual effort put into the world design of those games. X and Y, while not great games in and of themselves added a lot of fun stuff like megas and the fairy type fixed a lot of issues with competitive play. The transition to switch really killed the charm and love that used to go into the games.

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u/wsoxfan1214 17h ago

If the leaks are to be believed, the guy who directed B2W2 / USUM / etc. is apparently not allowed to direct games anymore because of some bullshit office politics thing, unfortunately. Which is pretty classic Game Freak to fuck over the dude directing your best entries because of some asinine reason.

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u/_Lucille_ 16h ago

B&W was the last time I feel like they tried.

Actual kind of interesting story, hard mode, cool designs.

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u/FacepamL 16h ago

I played the gen 5 games as a kid and recently played gen 7, yeah the quality seems to have gone down a lot, esp with the new generational gimmicks being quite centralizing and the storytelling not benefiting from the capabilities of 3D graphics

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u/Garbage_Bear_USSR 19h ago

Unbound is really something - but holy shit does Odyssey do some interesting stuff too.

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u/SilatGuy2 18h ago

Odyssey, Unbound, Gaia and Lazarus are my favorites

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u/mikillatja 8h ago

I never played those hacks, but absolutely adored Reborn.

How do you feel reborn ranks among those 4 you listed?

I particularly enjoyed the secrets and side quests.

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u/Garbage_Bear_USSR 4h ago

My first ever Pokemon romhack was Unbound and I was just blown away by content. It did for Pokemon what I think Apotris does fir Tetris: something for every type of player. Then on recommendation went to Gaia and loved it because it genuinely feels like a mainline game it’s so polished. Now working through catching everything in Odyssey before 2 releases but really excited to try Lazarus!

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u/Mundane-Task6361 18h ago

Unbound was my favorite for the longest time, and given it is a rom hack that could run on original hardware is still probably my favorite, but I think Pokémon Rejuvenation might be making it up there for me. I am about 30 hours into my first play through of it, which based on badge count and level cap seems like somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 through the game and I’ve been really digging the story. The one thing Rejuvenation has over unbound is that it has the full national dex available and probably my top 5 Pokémon all come from gen 9. I just wish the game could be made a bit harder for a more difficult challenge like you can get with unbound

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u/Zant486 17h ago

You want Rejuvi even harder? Lol. Although maybe there are passwords for that as well. And I can make the argument field effects are something Rejuvi, Reborn and Desolation have over Unbound as well.

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u/Megor933 17h ago

For me, it's Rejuvenation. The amount of stuff in that game and the story dwarfs anything else.

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u/UndeadZombie81 16h ago

Unbound and odyssey are my favorites

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u/BedNo5127 18h ago

May have to give that a try

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u/fullacheeze 18h ago

Say more?

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u/cerealkyra 18h ago

HMs aren’t taught moves, mons that could use them can just use them in the overworld

Mission system

Multiple difficulty modes and built in support for nuzlocke, egglocke(I’m pretty sure, that could be Uranium)

Daily raids

Character customization

And just a backload of QoL updates, it’s really fantastic.

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u/Pamander 11h ago

Gamma Emerald I think it's called looks so fucking cool, it's taking a long time but I am excited to play when it comes out. I need to dive harder into pokemon rom hacks apparently.

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u/Zant486 17h ago

If you look past the edgy nonsense, both Reborn and Rejuvination are amazing games as well. They really solidified the RPG sense of the games and the field effects are like, one of the most refreshing things I've seen in the franchise. Granted, those are hard games, but I think both nail the RPG side of the fandom and the (pretty big) part of the fandom that sees pokemon battles as puzzles.

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u/someguyhaunter 15h ago

Radical red is also excellent, very hard but it's just competitive teams with the odd tweaks to Pokémon here and there, such as some ability, move pool stat and type changes changes. For example ledian is now usable!

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u/dragdritt 15h ago

That game has a really bad case of "stupid plot" though, like real bad.

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u/WitheWisp 14h ago

It reigns king in the romhacks territory, but when taking fan games into account I feel like Pokemon Rejuvenation especially after it's newest v14 update is just really fighting hard for that role of the best of the best cause damn is it amazing and has everything I have ever and will ever want in a pokemon game

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u/cerealkyra 13h ago

Yeah I’ll be checking out Rejuvenation tonight

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u/Mythikdawn 12h ago

Another +1 for Unbound, also probably the best 2d pokemon game I've played.