A look back at: Koudelka

Hooray! I managed to get another RPG done for the year, against the odds that my day job and my other commitments would prevent me from doing another RPG. I had this one on the backburner for a long while, having finished up stuff for Doomwiki in short order and I never managed to touch this game until about the summer or so. In any case, a game with a titular protagonist in the Playstation era that certainly combines the turn-based RPG and horror genres quite well, and also manages to be the predecessor to the Shadow Hearts franchise.

So, this is a peculiar game no matter how I look at it. Four discs, but it's not necessarily a long game. I think the four discs are there cause of all the cutscenes and FMVs, which are quite a highlight for the game as a whole. Music is interesting but it only really shows up during battles, and the setting is an old manor where our three protagonists go into for different reasons and is crawling with nightmare fuel. The navigation may perplex people with what to do or where to go, kinda like a cinematic platformer or something, so a guide may be necessary. Especially with all the items on the floor and the key items necessary to beat the whole game.

But the main meat has to be the battles and this one is full of ups and downs. The interface is thankfully simple enough, grid-based movement and turns to use, you get various weapons that can hit at a range or with melee attacks, plus the magic spells are universal for all characters and do more damage based on range. Plus leveling magic. And leveling up stats with bonus points. Which is delightful in its own right. Grinding was a thing I decided to do, though it really isn't as necessary as I thought originally. Enemies don't really get names which makes identifying them impossible, and they have their own stats and abilities I'm sure. The two things I don't like about the battle system though are the overall pacing and weapons breaking. The latter is a major issue due to the fact that weapons, along with armor, accessories, and most items, are usually random drops from enemies after a battle. Every weapon that isn't the bare hands will break after some predetermined number of uses (I checked to make sure they weren't just random). This makes grinding up weapon levels a huge pain. There's some attributes to weapons too, which are possible to savescum because some attributes like Light are actually useless. However, it makes using weapons, particularly with Edward, the overall best physical attacker, difficult. And then you have the overall pacing of the battles. Spell animations are long, the loading times between world-and-battle are also long, and some enemy movements, attack animations, or even defeat animations are quite long. Even regular battles just take a long time to get through due to this. I don't expect them to be short but it's a valid complaint because it is longer than most other RPGs, and heaven help you if you don't have your plugins set up correctly.

The story is quite nice. Again, three strangers end up teaming up not because they want to but to survive for various reasons. Koudelka herself manages real well and James has his main goal of seeing Elaine again. Edward is kinda there but he fits an adventurer vibe alright. Seeing the crazed caretakers being psychopaths is cool, as is the creepy Charlotte, the somehow creepier Roger, and all sorts of stuff in between. There's even a gargoyle optional boss. Treasure is around and about, not all is great but free stuff. This definitely has the survivalist feel to it, plus it's got multiple endings to boot. That final boss is quite annoying with its magic, you have to reflect it back to her and I really hate her healing move.

A look back at: Pokemon Metal Red

Walkthrough

Sigh...

I'm sighing of relief, this one's done. I'm glad it's over. But I'm also angry about a ton of things about it. Metal Red, you are a good example of a ROM hack stressing quantity over quality. It is much better the other way around. Anyways, let's look at all the things that this ROM hack offered once again, starting with the actually few positives.

1. The art style is an improvement. This one's obvious. I loved the immersion of Pokemon sitting on rooftops and Pidgeots flying over buildings.

2. The menu screens are definitely interesting.

3. There's no new plot. Surprisingly, this isn't a bad thing. It's just the usual Fire Red plot but of course we'll be seeing new Pokemon in any case.

4. Having new Pokemon from every generation means that team-building is much easier to do. I already ended up with a stacked team, with three starter Pokemon (Torterra, Emboar, Greninja) before my third badge. Adding onto that was Ribombee, Crobat, and Toxtricity and I'm pretty damn loaded for a team. All of these were also early-route Pokemon too. (plus a Watchog for HM usage).

5. I can definitely appreciate the higher challenge, ROM hacks do that all the time, and I can also appreciate that grinding isn't going to be as difficult since every non-fainted Pokemon will gain experience every time you defeat one.

6. I managed to get a shiny Buneary in this game. Which means that shinies do work for the mons past 386.

And...that's about it as far as positives go, because there are a ton of negatives.

1. Since I mentioned the shared experience earlier, it led to something weird from the very first battle. After beating my rival these...blank spaces somehow gained experience along with my starter, even gaining several levels despite being unused slots. Thankfully this didn't have gameplay impact and I immediately understood what things were all about once I got a full team going. Every Pokemon gains experience indeed, allowing for more balanced teams, but those blank spaces without a full team freaked me out. Also, there's no need to have the actual Exp. Share if this were the case, but it's still in the game.

2. About Brendan's inclusion. Well, it's not bad and adds a new element to the gameplay for a new rival just traveling abroad from Hoenn, as one might expect Brendan to possibly do. But he offers nothing to the story, not that that's a bad thing, he's just around for an additional challenge, and is usually just an optional fight. Furthermore, why the heck is his battle sprite that of Gold/Ethan's and not Brendan from the R/S/E games?

3. Speaking of battle sprites, some are terribly drawn, this is most notable with the Rocket grunts, my goodness the scaling on them really needs work.

4. I certainly adore the idea of the overworld Pokemon encounters in the first few routes and on Viridian Forest, adding the element of repeatedly battling Pidgey, Nidorans, Pikachu, and Spearow is fun. But they no longer appear after Route 3. Seems like this was no longer going to be implemented anymore afterwards.

5. The black hole things serve really no purpose. A child is in front of the first one you see and never moves from it. There's a few others in areas out of bounds. The one you can access is in Viridian Forest for an encounter with Tapu Bulu, but this is yet another concept which would have been interesting but was cut early on.

6. The optional rival battle on Route 23, wow, that was a HUGE LEVEL JUMP. Again I like challenge but having him start with a Lv18 Pidgeotto and a Lv20 starter is too much for the very early game. Brock has the same level Pokemon too, but by then, you would have gotten the chance to train more.

7. I think the National dex should have been given right off the bat like the Running Shoes were, not just outside of Pewter City when I had managed to get several non-Kanto mons into evolution range.

8. Speaking of the National Dex, the thing takes a while to load, but it also reaches an odd point after Marshadow. It's strange to see that this section is dedicated to what appears to be regional forms, mega evolutions, and gigantamax forms. Yet these "forms" aren't entirely accurate. Like for example, I can evolve a Pikachu in this game, which unfortunately doesn't evolve into Raichu but rather Alolan Raichu, but the Alolan Raichu I receive is for some reason #913 in the dex! Which is really strange. Add to that the fact that Alolan Raichu (as in #26 in the dex) can be caught in the Power Plant as a completely different dex entry. It makes no sense. For the record, the Galar Pokemon start at #918, where Grookey is, but I haven't gotten any further than...a Gigantamax Meowth form which is #969?

9. Speaking of regional forms, I hate to break it to you but not all forms are in here. Don't expect Kantonian Slowpoke, Raichu, Weezing, or Exeggutor, they aren't in here. Even though there would be far more variety. And some Pokemon encountered are just not in the dex at all. Rotom's several forms not being in the dex is justified, but not Poipole or Naganadel. Blipbug even has an index number of 000 and doesn't appear with Dottler and Orbeetle where it's supposed to be either. Plus, it's NORMAL type.

10. And then, we have the evolution methods. Trade Stones are great for the trade evolutions of course, but not everything that evolves by trade evolves that way. Seadra can't evolve into Kingdra via Trade Stone for instance, even if you equip it with a Dragon Scale beforehand. Meaning that you'll never get a Kingdra legitimately.

11. This will segue into the fact that some particular Pokemon are completely unavailable whatsoever. This includes Kingdra, but also several other lines like Slowpoke's entire line (side note: Galarian Slowpoke is in this game, but the regular forms of Slowbro and Slowking are in here) are completely absent from the wild. There are honestly way too many Pokemon that cannot be obtained whatsoever.

12. Speaking of Trade Stones, it along with the Ice Stone, Mega Stones (regular ones act as Gigantamaxing, while the ones with the names such as Blastoisinite do what you expect), all of these can be found by a guy in Celadon's department store. While this is cool and all, there's a number of problems. The biggest issue is that he doesn't have everything in stock that you can't get elsewhere. The elemental evolutionary stones are of course on 4F, but this guy doesn't have Sun or Moon Stones. There's only a handful of Moon Stones in the game to find (others can be found by catching wild Clefairy in Mt. Moon, a 1% encounter), and there's only one Sun Stone in the game (besides catching wild Solrock in Victory Road, which have only a 5% chance of having a Sun Stone). So he should have more. But he also has only Trade Stones, Mega Stones, and Ice Stones. Ice Stones as far as I know only evolve Darumaka into Darmanitan, and in case you're wondering, these Pokemon are NOT Galarian forms, so it's really strange that a FIRE type evolves via an ICE stone, not even changing form. Plus the "Final Form" stone is a glitched money amount at P?000, which as far as I know only works with Hoopa in battle. Except I caught a Hoopa that already held this item and its Unbound form can be found in the wild too. Other issues include certain Pokemon not evolving at the right level (Corsola doesn't become Currsola at all), and even some friendship evolutions like Riolu don't work.

13. I guess the author was just content with slapping completely random Pokemon in some areas, as in I dunno, a Feebas in Mt. Moon which has no water in it whatsoever, or other Water types in non-water routes in the grass, or the occasional legendary. But there should be some sense in where wild Pokemon are encountered and it doesn't feel as such most of the time.

14. And that's not even concerning the oddity that some Pokemon don't have any moves at all when you probably are catching them for the first time! Not every Pokemon has an ability, which is less of an issue, although there are quite a few new abilities post-Gen-3 which are fun, but some Pokemon can be caught without knowing any moves at all. In battle, all they can do is Struggle, and while they can get moves later on, it makes a ton of really good Pokemon just not seem all that good.

15. As for the moves themselves, I can appreciate several good new moves. But some existing moves? My goodness! They were seriously corrupted. Moves like Fake Out, Crunch, Uproar, Rock Smash, these moves ended up looking glitched when I viewed them, and attempting to use them in battle softlocks the game. I actually had to open up Gen-3 Tools to modify many particular glitched moves to their normal values and everything, which thankfully didn't break the hack but it really does boggle my mind why these moves were all glitched out like that.

16. When you close the neat little menu screen, pressing A or B again causes the confirmation sound pop up again. A minor issue but it surprises me sometimes.

17. Onto trainer battles. The first bug catcher in Viridian Forest has a Mega Beedrill. The second has a Gigantamax Butterfree. See the issue here? Again, I don't mind a challenge but these are the first official NPC trainers in the game not counting the two rival battles beforehand. And they already have their first Pokemon as mega evolution and gigantamax form? Why? At least with gym leaders it makes sense but if a trainer's first mon is possible to mega-evolve or gigantamax, you better bet they will immediately do that.

18. Or said Pokemon will, for some odd reason, hold a Potion, which is useless as a held item. Heck, some trainers have useless held items on them according to data I found and I just don't know why any of them would have these items in battle.

19. One of the worser glitches, sometimes, with a mega evolution, it mega-evolves, and doesn't change form onscreen. It just has the stats and type of the mega evolution. Defeat it as you will and their second Pokemon in line will be changed to the mega evolution form itself, completely overwriting whatever Pokemon was in there, making the battle wholly awkward. Brendan's last battle has this where he has a Rayquaza mega-evolve, but the second Pokemon in line (Swampert), is a Mega Rayquaza instead. And if a trainer has just one Pokemon, then they will somehow gain a SECOND Pokemon which is the mega-evolution form, but shiny and Lv0, and offer 1 experience point! This is seriously a major glitch.

20. Typhlosion somehow has a mega-evolution stone in Typhlosionite, which transforms it into...I'm guessing its form in Legends: Arceus? It also not only is the only Johto starter with a mega form, but offers only 5 measly experience points on beating it.

21. Trainers in the game aren't accommodated for the Pokemon past Generation 3 at all, and most are just using Generation 1 Pokemon, which I can actually expect. It does mean most regular battles are quite easy, though some have the Alolan or Galarian forms of a Pokemon instead, or of course Mega Stones or Gigantamax involved. I was just expecting much more in variety.

22. It looks like there was supposed to be an event upon entering Cerulean City which explains why Red is just sitting near the entrance. But he does nothing when interacted with.

23. Some tiles throughout the game are glitched or just don't look right, a problem with the new design. A very noticeable design glitch happens when going between Route 18 and Fuchsia City for instance.

24. So while the plot of the game is similar to Fire Red's fully, I was in for a rude awakening at the Pokemon League because the girl there told me that Lorelei was missing. This is normally something that is supposed to happen so you can do the Sevii Islands sidequest stuff AFTER your first win at the league, but it happens now instead, before you would tackle the league the first time.

25. And the worst part is, there's data for what is supposed to be the full six-teams of the Elite Four and champion, but you never get to fight them. I'll talk about this a bit later.

26. In my opinion, the ultimate sin. The day care doesn't work. I'm of course talking about the Four Island day care, because nobody uses the Route 5 day care, but here's how you would probably end up breeding Pokemon for the dex. You get a Ditto, then the desired mon, into the day care, walk around for a while, return to get your egg, and that's how it works. Okay cool. Egg getting is not glitched. Neither is egg hatching, thankfully. Except, you would want to use different Pokemon for breeding, so you attempt to retrieve the one. Except, it softlocks. Yup, you cannot breed more than one Pokemon species as a result of this glitch. You cannot retrieve your Pokemon from the daycare because it softlocks if you do so. You can retrieve a Pokemon only if it's the only one you put in the daycare, but if you put two, you're never getting them back without reloading a save game and just never putting them in the daycare. I have had TONS of evolved forms of Pokemon caught in the game where their base forms were just not available. Like there was wild Toxapex in an early route, but no wild Mareanie anywhere in the game. So my intent was to breed to just get it in the dex, but I would end up having to sacrifice breeding the entire rest of my stash of caught mons for just one and there's no way to retrieve without the game locking up. So many evolved forms of Pokemon were in my PC, and their base forms were technically impossible to get.

27. Speaking of impossible to get, no way to get Ho-Oh or Mew, normally event-exclusive Pokemon. Would be nice if they were in the Safari Zone with other legendaries or otherwise, but that's not a thing I am able to do.

28. As I said before, the league had data for the Elite Four and Champion having buff Lv100 teams, but you never challenge them. After finishing off Team Rocket in the Rocket Warehouse, you can return to the league to challenge them, but they use essentially their rematch teams. Now granted, they are all Lv100 and do have their first mon as a mega/gigantamax (except Lorelei who leads with Dewgong), but these teams are just the same as the usual FR/LG Elite Four/Champion rematch teams in composition, and I miss out on a better challenge otherwise since the Elite Four in these challenges only have five Pokemon instead of six.

29. The Hall of Fame is of course bugged too. While some Pokemon past the 386 mark do show up fine, others end up being replaced by mons earlier in number in the dex. This happened with my team. Crobat and Torterra were fine, quite surprising with Torterra. But my Emboar is shown as Zubat? Ribombee as Marshtomp? Greninja as Slowking? Toxtricity as Purugly? Completely inaccurate.

30. Finally, the repel system. The game was advertised as having an auto repel system but this doesn't work. But the worst part is, you actually DON'T know when your repel wears off! I was startled when this happened out of the blue, there was zero indication that my repel went off at all while traversing through a cave at one point.

So overall, I really wouldn't recommend this ROM hack in the slightest. You can play it out of curiosity but it will be disappointing due to many glitches, lack of storyline (not a bad thing but some want story in their games), and things that just could have been done a lot better.