A look back at: Digimon World

What a tiring game. And for the Playstation and for a one-disc game, this is surprisingly impressive. It takes a lot to figure out what to do in this game and even then there are still areas of the game which even guides have yet to figure out. Man, did it really take years to figure out the Digivolution? Because that certainly was a core mechanic that I feel this game really should have done better. Anyways, yeah, Digimon World, this is my first foray into this small series and I plan to play more, but this first game is easily the most unique.

As unique as it is, it takes a ton of balancing in order to just beat the game, and even far more to complete it. I don't think I'm gonna try that latter half. See, you have one Digimon as your pet, you gotta take it to training, feed it, have it battle, and have it go potty. All while balancing what appears to be general RPG navigation and other mechanics. Well, apart from the battles, which ends up being another key point as in the beginning their entirely AI controlled. I've never really been a fan of "letting things play out" with little in the way of influencing the battle, and I would argue that there should be more commands available early instead of when you can increase their Brains stat. With AI control, you're bound to see your or enemy Digimon just run around, determine whether or not to block attacks, or use the right techniques you want, and what could have been a short battle ends up much longer. Battling is necessary for extra skills and for stat increases of course, but then you gotta deal with that and getting the RIGHT stats up for Digivolving, all the virtual pet stuff I mentioned earlier, oh, did I mention that Digimons can lose their lifespan and start completely anew? Yeah, they can.

And all this while you try to rebuild a town. I actually like this mechanic a lot, reminds me of the Suikoden games and recruiting people for your castle. Except for a fleeting moment where a Greymon can ambush you outside the main house, which can be unwinnable if you just have a rookie Digimon at the moment. Definitely not fun. Of course, time-based events are at play, meaning there is quite a lot of waiting, but having to combine that with training the Digimon makes it quite easy to miss the event you were hoping to trigger. But hey, I hear the other Digimon games have significantly different gameplay, and I do applaud the many things to do, even if they take up most of the game that the plot of this game doesn't really take off.

A look back at: Pokemon Sky Twilight

Well, this one is an in-between in my eyes. My team consisted of Pokemon I have used multiple times in other hacks: Blaziken (was my mega), Quagsire, Claydol, Crobat, Florges, and Galvantula. I flipped mons a few times, notably having a Vaporeon instead of Quagsire for a good chunk but the HM usage was a thing to consider. My walkthrough is here too.

So this features mons, abilities, and moves up to Gen-7 and a slightly expanded dex, which is great. Most if not all evolution methods are changed, trade evolutions usually require a new stone or a certain level, and things generally work out. The difficulty in this one is probably the first I played to not be actually that difficult, there's no super trainers to battle postgame (actually there's no postgame), and the champion's highest level mon is Lv48. Granted, it's a new mega evolution, and yes there are new mega evolutions and all existing ones in this game. So you have all of this, and then you have a brand new region to comb through, a plot with a traditional evil team that wants a legendary (but the legendary is actually Noivern) and it is fairly easy due to big trainers having no more than three Pokemon and three moves each. Some criticize a decision like that, but I could use a difficulty break.

With all this said, it's no Dreams. There still lies a number of problems, and that usually has to do with progression. It's fairly open, although some routes your character just refuses to enter until you get the next badge or do the next event. One of my bigger gripes has to be that some places are not possible to fly out of, due to certain towns replacing Sevii island locations therefore you cannot fly back to other areas (and the map gets glitched too). The worst of this is Amaranth Village, because the day care is there, and you have to go all the way through Amaranth Path to the previous route to fly somewhere else. And it takes at least two Super Repels to even head on out of that cave. I used the day care for breeding, specifically for getting the base forms of pseudo legendaries, which while they are static encounters in secret caves, why in the world are they mid-stage starting out? I also was unable to resurrect the Old Amber fossil nor was I able to get an egg at Camellias Island.

But this all pales in comparison to the fact that some areas just weren't accessible, and that there were a number of other bugs not weeded out. The sign in Amaryllis Town softlocks the game, and sending a Drilbur out to battle for some reason also freezes it! That's a bit severe especially if you like Drilbur. Then there's Begonia Cavern, the later parts of it, where you can't cross one bridge and need the Walk Through Walls code to see what's on the other end. Of course, that area is optional, but Victory Canyon? The Victory Road of this game? You need to go through it, and can get as far as the second floor before the glitch tiles get in the way. And then there's the cave with the Deino and the exit cave, both of which have an invisible wall blocking. And then, every single Elite Four room has an issue with the door to the next room not being accessible. Why the invisible walls? I could have used AdvanceMap to modify the movement permissions for this too, but it's not something that a person just downloading the hack should have to deal with. And these things can certainly ruin a hack with a lot of great features.