A look back at: Pokemon Kalos Crystal

No walkthrough from me this time, there's a reason for that. I will say my team though: Delphox, Jellicent, Krookodile, Florges, Aegislash, and Galvantula, plus a Watchog for HM usage, a Swoobat as a Fly user, and a Slurpuff for Sweet Scent.

So my expectations for this were ultimately shattered, as I thought it was going to be like Gold Unova, playing through a full region just demade. Instead, it's actually the other way around. Kalos Crystal is a sequel to a hack called Unova Red. What these hacks are is you play through the original game (Red or Crystal), but with the Pokemon from those regions. So Unova Pokemon were only in Unova Red, while Kalos includes them as well as the Kalos-native Pokemon. And there's 229 total, and yes it's possible to get all of them, including legendaries. Plus with the Fairy type added, a few minor changes to special and physical attacks, and new moves and TMs to accommodate the new Pokemon, and honestly it wasn't entire as shattering as expectations ended up, since yes you are playing the original Crystal, you're just playing with two different generations of Pokemon.

So yeah, nothing new in the storyline at all. The only real difference is whenever someone mentions some Pokemon. For instance, Slowpoke Well is now Stunfisk Well, because Slowpoke and its line aren't in the game. The author certainly went out of the way to make sure the sprites for some Pokemon were also different, including ones for Stunfisk and a few others like Honedge. Neat. Battles with major opponents were also done so that they would still use their type specialty, but of course with different Pokemon. The biggest change would be towards Elite Four Will who is now a Fairy specialist instead of Psychic. Makes sense, Sabrina I guess would have to keep her specialty in Kanto.

I think I did more than my fair share when playing, after all the Gen-2 games are longer than most people realize. I'm glad the roaming legendaries (Thundurus and Tornadus) are in the dex after you release them, plus the Ruins of Alph sidequests were somehow made more interesting. And they did make both the Elite Four and additional rival battle stronger, while not going too far with day/night events. It's just a nice hack to play if you don't mind any new story stuff and want to play Crystal differently. So yeah, no walkthrough because the story is the same. I mean I could have made a trainer guide but I decided not to.

A look back at: Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

Still going on that Might and Magic streak, yes, I will play other games as I play this, because if I'm going through a franchise like this all in one sitting, I'd get bored quickly. You gotta jump between franchises man, otherwise stuff will wear thin.

Anyways, the seventh iteration of Might and Magic proves to not be too different than the sixth. Or does it really? Frankly the core gameplay elements all remain, they just decided to bring back the other races aside from humans and add some new classes. And they then got the nerve to get inspired from FF8/FF9. Okay I kid, but seriously, an addicting card minigame was given into this one. This took a while to get used to though, so it really reminded me a lot of Triple Triad except probably harder. Well, that's kind of the deal with the Might and Magic series. Though easier than older iterations, M&M7 still has its many moments.

But I think we can agree that with all these branching points and the fact that I nowadays like to play a game all the way through only once, it gets to that point where half of my review is just me watching Youtube videos on the alternative paths to take while I take what I presume to be the canon path. And part of me keeps thinking that the non-canon paths could have been canon cause they are sometimes more interesting. I took the evil path, which proved to be quite fun. Didn't really understand what was up with the eight heroes and the fact that they all split themselves up into the good 4 and evil 4 and you had to pick a side. And them being advisors for other races, in the middle of you cleaning out your castle and realizing you've got some diplomacy placed onto your hands. Loved some of the ideas in the plot a lot more than the sixth game overall though, and I think the game is enjoyable regardless of the path you take. Still got that customization, still got the difficulty.