A look back at: Pokemon Polka Aqua

 So far, so good this month! I recently got back into the RPG groove, continuing the Might and Magic series, and I finally finished this up. So yes, another LatiosAzurill hack, having done two Grass ones and the Fire one, it's time to check out the water in Polka Aqua, and there's a sequel on the way too. Welcome me back to this after I somehow took three months off to focus on Doom stuff, welp. Indeed, as I did with the others, I had a walkthrough going, and I'm sure glad to have saved it. Many, and I mean, many of the things here really felt like Scorching Scarlet, but sort of an expansion and such. Some towns like Chicago weren't there before, and I also appreciate the fact that the map is now showing the other towns properly (sadly you cannot fly to any of them that don't replace the vanilla Pokemon towns).

As for the gameplay, if you already know the drill, the author likes high-level trainer battles, up to the ubers with Lv100 teams and everyone seems to have 255 EVs, some with held items that do things, plus the Eric-like trainers will for some reason always have shinies. Wild encounters, well, there's nothing bad about most of them, and the key highlight I found is that the starters can all be encountered really early on! Great! In wild grass, but these are in certain early towns like River City and Stars Hollow. Quite fun. 

When it comes to legendaries, some were in bags, most required me to finish all the post-game plot stuff, but the two that really sealed the deal were for some reason Volcanion and Meloetta. One required you to "prove yourself" with a 50-win streak at the Battle Tower, the other requires five paintings in the Art Museum (so lots of contests). Both tasks are also tasks that change the trainer card color, and are hugely difficult and time-consuming in the regular game. Sadly, for two more legendaries Cosmog and Necrozma, you must complete the PokeDex, so you gotta get those two, as well as everything else, Safari Zone Pokemon, other one-time only legendaries, a few freebies here and there that can be hard to find (having to sleep in random beds to get Cresselia and Darkrai is creative, but certainly not something even savvy players would think of, yes, you can sleep in any of the white beds and it's a way to heal too). Really am not a fan of Wingull/Azumarills blocking the way to places either, but I guess it's to keep from certain premature entrances into places from occurring. And I still hate that Neverland maze and Infinite Forest. Real hard! But it's all still entertaining to play a "Hoenn but not Hoenn" hack, with all those sitcom and movie people all around playing in a strange crossover of sorts. Glad I didn't forget about this, huh?

A look back at: Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra

 

Well it's certainly been a while since I played an RPG of some sort! I focused heavily on platformers for the tail end of last year, but I did get a bit of a start playing Might and Magic III at some point. I just put it off for months to do Dooming and platforming and what not. But hey, I never want to leave a stone unturned, and I got right back into the swing of things. Though I did need to refresh myself somewhat, since it's been a while and this game like the others still remains quite hard.

The good news? Well, things are far more convenient. Menu options are done much better so that I can get my spells easier as well as getting experience and saving, more conveniences makes the challenge much less but sometimes it's appreciated. To offset this, there's no number values visible on the screen for HP and what not, you just get character portraits (still an indicator of their status) and color bars (a less-than-adequate way of indicating health). Thankfully there's still the menu options which are a godsend coming off the heels of the previous game. So Might and Magic III, your gameplay improved greatly and I'm starting to ease into the series a bit more and more as we go along. Indeed, the gameplay and the character customization are still the strong suits and remain strong.

The weak suit, of course, is the plot, which, well, hey, the franchise has so far been quite primitive in storyline and there's not much to really go by. But this one in particular is a bit more confusing. So new setting, that's nice, but the adventurers of Terra that you recruit and use aren't really connected to anyone in particular. They're not the same ones from the previous game, as they live on Terra. They just somehow get caught up in the whole Corak vs. Sheltem conflict. And there's no endgame boss to speak of, Corak just pursues Sheltem with your party pursuing both. And I hear somehow that the party loses their way and ends up in a distant sequel as opposed to the fourth game, according to the Wikipedia article? Seems strange. I think Wizardry does better with the storylines compared to Might and Magic, but I'll still see just how far Might and Magic can go with its craziness and maybe there's some interesting stuff later on.