A look back at: Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

(Note: I finished this game last week from the timestamp of this post. Whoops, I usually do the post here after I finish, but I forgot. I did finish this game on around the 22nd of March though).

And so I continue with the Advanced D&D games but going away from Gold Box for a moment for this game that seriously has those WOW or Diablo vibes. I mean, look at that screenshot and you should be able to see some similarities. The vibes are certainly there with the medieval setting and all, but the gameplay is anything but MMORPG. Don't worry, I've got no intention to play those games, since I prefer the more linear plotlines of regular games in all seriousness.

Ruins of Myth Drannor is heavily, and I mean heavily, quest-driven. There's so many quests or steps to get to quests that I got sidetracked far more than I usually would. The main quest is basically "big good wizard tells your four heroes to stop this evil sorceress and her dragon boyfriend from using the Pool of Radiance, and to also finally destroy it", and then there's a bunch of other things to cover, maybe a few select characters that are temporary party members or so for extra fun. Plus all the extra treasures and having to fight all the denizens of the ruins. Yippee?

Well, not so much. First of all, the gameplay still practices the turn-based mechanics of its predecessors. When you have free-range like this, maybe trying the Diablo route would work better. Cause moving units to be right in melee weapon range will look awkward in free-range movement. Oh, but look at those D&D flair, the rolls and such. That's neat, but of course missing is never fun. An ideal party is two strong physical fighters and two mages, their classes could be anything aside from the cliche ones of course but there's always the skewing upon leveling up units and such. But the hardest thing about this game is just how boring it got. You go on the quests, but you basically have to tough out encounters each time of varying degrees, and that drowning orchestra does get grating after a while with each battle.

And then, there's the game-breaking nonsense that could ruin save files at times. It's easily the most annoying thing about this game. I think I might just return to messing around with the Gold Box games in the meantime. 

Game/mod/ROM hack walkthroughs

It really does suck that we have lost the GBAHacks site. I guess due to the inactivities, broken links, and possible strikes, it had to happen. And I did have a number of walkthroughs for ROM hacks submitted to Knuckle San so that they can be of help to those who can't understand the crypticness of certain ROM hacks. In that case, I'll just have to post them on PokeCommunity and here. This post will of course be updated accordingly whenever I finish a walkthrough and a ROM hack.

Just to be clear, these are links to walkthroughs. I'm not here to distribute ROMs.

Full walkthroughs:

Pokemon Adventure Yellow Chapter + Blue Chapter + Gold Chapter + Green Chapter

Pokemon Altair and Pokemon Sirius

Pokemon Ash Gray

Pokemon Cloud White 

Pokemon Dark Cry: The Legend of Giratina

Pokemon Dark Crystal

Pokemon Dark Rising 2

Pokemon Dark Rising: Order Destroyed

Pokemon Dark Violet

Pokemon Gold & Silver '97 Reforged

Pokemon Grass Jewel

Pokemon Grass Jewel 2

Pokemon Hyetology

Pokemon Luria

Pokemon Metal Red

Pokemon Nameless

Pokemon Polka Aqua

Pokemon Polka Aqua 2

Pokemon Prism 

Pokemon Saiph  

Pokemon Scorching Scarlet

Pokemon Sky Twilight

Pokemon Snakewood

Pokemon Stigma

Pokemon Sweet

Pokemon TDT

Pokemon Ultra Fire Sun 

Pokemon Vega

Pokemon Victory Fire

Pokemon Voda Red

Touhoumon Cirno 

The Wooper Who Saved Christmas 1 + 2 

Partial walkthroughs/Pokedexs/Other stuff

Pokemon Emerald Seaglass (general walkthrough only)

Pokemon Liquid Crystal

Pokemon Mega Power

Pokemon Nameless (battle arenas/department guide)

Pokemon Resolute

Pokemon Sapphire in Reverse 

Pokemon Ultra Fire Sun 

And now for a new and additional bonus. I'm playing through ROM hacks of other games as well and will be writing walkthroughs of official games! Check the categories below:

Official game walkthroughs:

Turbo Turtle Adventures 

Legend of Zelda (NES) ROM hack walkthroughs: 

Timecrisis: Fall of the Moon

Zelda Challenge: Outlands (1st Quest)

Zelda Challenge: Outlands (2nd Quest)

Super Monkey Ball 2 ROM hack walkthroughs

Monkeyed Ball (includes Forgotten Stages)

Monkeyed Ball 2: Witty Subtitle 

SMBDX in SMB2 

SMB2 SMB1 Style 

Super Monkey Ball Gaiden 

A look back at: Pokemon Cloud White

Walkthrough, not entirely complete, but like I couldn't get absolutely everything when bugs and glitches prevent me from doing so.

Well hello there. My goodness, how long has it been since my last Pokemon ROM hack? 5 months? Wow. This is what happens when I have a bunch of other commitments and I decide to try my hand at many, many more. I got into the hang of doing walkthroughs for different ROM hacks outside Pokemon, and then I had my RPGs that I took more time in doing, so clearly the ROM hacks here have been delayed considerably. But even with those in mind, guess what? I had an ENORMOUS one when I decided to check out Cloud White. My team here was Infernape, Claydol, Crobat, Lapras, Jumpluff, and Mega Ampharos (megas are permanent in this game).

I honestly don't know where I could begin. Cloud White includes base Fire Red (Kanto + Sevii). It includes Johto. It includes the Mangan Archipelago which is an entirely new region, and some of these islands are actually shaped like Japan. So meta. What? Oh, and there's an entire region based entirely out of France, and this region in particular, they all speak it. Cute, but this meant that for the non-French speaking audiences, they have no clue what things are, so my walkthrough shows some translations. Maybe a bit too much?

But the whole hack seems like too much, and not in the best of ways. Yes, your money amount can go above what Game Freak set the max as. And you can go above Level 100, there are some trainers there in that regard too. But even with all this, there's way more regions that trying to make a guide on all this is insane enough on its own, and that's not getting into the fact that the game's trainers get to be stagnant at the end of it all. Major trainers will either have a theme or all megas, and there's supposedly some edgy story for the Azur region in particular about samurai clans. Oh, and you get to be an emperor. Yeah, emperor, no gender differences were considered here. Very lame in that regard.

More mons up to Gen-6, getting all the megas in as well. The Fairy type was one I considered getting and god I need to vent about this, because this SUCKS. The Fairy type was just not implemented well at all. I was hoping to get a good fairy mon, but neither Gardevoir (or its mega), or Togekiss, the best possible options for me not counting Xerneas or Cresselia, just didn't learn the moves I need (plus Shiny Stones are extremely late for Togekiss anyways). I was stuck with Fairy Wind off of Jumpluff for a Fairy move as my only real option. Also for Moonblast, the de facto Fairy move, I mentioned those two legendaries, who do learn it by level, but who's bright idea was it to make Moonblast a STATUS move in categorization? That's just straight up awful, and you can't even use it to hit a Mega Sableye super effectively cause it will get bounced back to you via Magic Bounce. Just, no. No changes to TMs by the way.

And even with all this, there's the definite screw-ups, such as not being able to correctly finish off the Johto region because the Manaphy event is a soft lock, preventing you from getting the next one down as well. The Tyranitar'Arena is supposed to open after you become emperor, but I think the script is broken cause I can't enter that either. And there are some locations where walk-in flags aren't in the right spots and I can't even enter, or there's some guard in the way regardless of what I do. Also Johto more or less feels like it's straight from Liquid Crystal, and they also have the randomized rain for EVERYTHING in the entire hack. Pokemon Cloud White is a perfect example of going too far. There's going to be things that are fine, and many other things that are just not fine. The walkthrough for this game that I made was my second-largest walkthrough ever after the main Pokemon Nameless walkthrough. It could probably be a lot larger if I was able to access some extra events. The official game guide did help me somewhat in making my own, and I ensured that I let you all know of all the trainers to battle and where.