Released Pokémon Shikari

• The opening cutscene. Clearly a lot of work went into the camera movements, dialogue, sprite work, etc. and I just wanted to take a moment to praise that personally.
• The maps. Oh. My. GOD. Mew, you outdid yourself here- the tiles, the layout, the blimp flying overhead... All so so so excellent. Hats off to you, my friend.
• Mon selection was, despite on first glance limited, actually fairly good the later you got into the demo. I haven't talked about this much in my other reviews but this one is much more battling heavy so I felt like I should.
• Pacing was excellent, except for the opening with Masumi. I felt like too much exposition was happening at once and too many scenes were overlapping.

• Balancing. I had to talk about this one, because it's something I struggled the most with. I felt like I was simultaneously overleveled and underleveled at the same time, with my starting team members regularly outpacing the rest of the team by 5 or even 10 levels in portions. Also, all of the Pokemon I received via gift near the start were vastly underleveled- at level 30, compared to the nearby trainers hovering around 45. It made training up new team members a chore, and the grinder that was 10 levels behind didn't help either.
• The dialogue was really cheesy and unsubtle at times. From characters sometimes straight out calling Masumi "rich person scum" to Masumi outright accusing the reporters of liber on live TV, it really felt like there was a disconnect between the serious tone the story was trying to make compared to the corny and less serious dialogue.
• The story, at times, was incredibly unsubtle. And I mean that in the best way possible. But Masumi asking "how can someone live like this" basically three times along with multiple NPCs mentioning it and the Nurse in the hospital? I couldn't have gotten the message any clearer. Show don't tell (which you did, again, with those amazing maps!)
• A lot of easily fixable errors that could have been caught with playtesting. Things like grass not having the bush property or improper priority on tiles.
• Pokemon healers were nonexistant. I found it irritating to go back to the Socialite every 10 minutes, traveling through 3 different maps. There could have easily even been a healer in the Slums' hospital.

Spoiler: Bugs

(May be intentional, Primarina was our sister's Pokemon wasn't it?)

Hair flips incorrectly while running

Typo, I think? Unsure.

Masumi can walk through walls (more at 8!)

Improper formatting

Priority issue

All garbage cans have this priority issue

This map needs to be extended just slightly.

Priority issue with box

Missing bush property, mentioned above. I believe this also happens in the Dump as well.

NocTurn said:

Hey there! Just finished my playthrough, I actually have a lot to say about this game- but I'm also hesitant, due to my limited perspective as a middle class white American. I don't necessarily have the credentials to talk that much about the message/morals of the story, but if I do mention it, please keep my limited perspective in mind.

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