Completed SPEE - Super Pokemon Eevee Edition

Whoa, I can't believe SPEE got finished, I remember playing a demo for this game when I was a teenager who was yet to learn English and stumble upon this game once again actually completed on my 20s is surreal! You bet as soon as I learned about this I played until the end, so here we go.

First off, the mechanics. I was a bit iffy about it at first, specially thinking how janky this game could get depending on how much it tried to be Pokémon within the RPG Maker 2003 limitations, but I was surprised by this game approach of things.

Pokémon is more of an aesthetic than anything, you can definitely see bits and pieces from the official games here and there, but the RM2k3/FF reigns above everything. Honestly? This is perfect, instead of hitting your head against the wall to accomplish a more 1:1 experience of the official Pokémon games and hiding the traits of the engine, you really went through your limitations to bring the most of it without trying to be something this game clearly wasn’t.

At the start of the game, I didn’t think much of the battle system, it wasn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t terrible either. When I finally got a full team and got some TMs I got a better picture of the battles. The PP system is pretty good towards most of the game and forces you to choose the best option not only for that battle, but for the long term of your exploration with the option to leave yourself wide open to restore a sizeable amount of PP of your entire team (It does get a bit obsolete by the end because of how little the Recharge actually restore in comparison with widely accessible items, though). The point is, just clicking the big damaging move every time doesn’t cut it most of the time, which is great.

Final Fantasy inspiration is also a bit worrying by the sad truth of a huge amount of FF inspired games usually falling into the trap of way too spongy enemies leading to uninteresting battles sooner or later, but this is also something this game managed to deal perfectly. The wild encounters are never too bulky to be annoying, but they can wear you off if you are not careful, the corrupted Pokémon are bulkier, but every time I feel I’m about to get bored, the battle was already long gone.

The hypervisors are the spongiest bosses in the game and even then, I can’t find myself hating any of those fights. The multiple forms are a great way to keep you entertained through their massive HP bars and you don’t even need to lower their HP to 0 because of how those battles work. The pacing is really enjoyable to give the player a good challenge without overstaying it’s welcome at any time.

Talking about good pace, this is the singular best quality of the entire game. The map design in particular is fantastic, not only the maps are beautiful to look at with a couple custom tiles alongside a great use of the official GSC tileset, but the shortcuts are all super on point.

I feel like the game is constantly respecting my time, giving me the challenge to take the long way, explore the map to my heart’s content and then, just when I’m about to be done I find a strength bolder to open a nice shortcut to keep my impression of that area positive every time I have to go through there again. I never felt that feeling of “I wish this area was easy to travel”, because every good point I can think about having a shortcut, it’s already there and I love it.

Exploring is so much fun because of it, the map variety is pretty nice and I found myself collecting a big number of Pokémon and defeating a couple legendary encounters for no reason other than the joy of seeing what the game had to over (and that nice exp too). The Rocket events also seems to pop up at the best time possible to shake things up without ever being annoying like their official game counterpart. Again, those 13 years of development weren’t for show, this game’s pacing is so fantastic I can’t even begin to imagine how much thought went into every little corner.

I gotta take some time to express how much I love the ninja quest line. Not every quest is built equally, they usually range from quick and easy to good excuses to explore more of the great map design, but the ninja is so freaking fun. It would be easy to put him in hard to access areas and call it a day, but what made it so fun was all the silly custom sprites he had on every city. I would be lying if I said I didn’t want the reward, but what made my complete the whole thing was the curiosity to uncover what funny sprite he would have next and that guy never let me down.

I know RM2k3 doesn’t have scripts, but I can’t stress enough how nice it feels to play a fan Pokémon game without worrying the game might freeze or crash at any moment. There is minor things like the Eevee very rarely getting stuck on walls, Giga Impact being labeled as a Special Move in the TM description or Hidden Power having 100 base power in the item description, but 60 in the actual move and a couple spelling mistakes, but again, nothing that made me enjoy the game less because of it.

And what about the plot? I think using something that actually happened (the cut of compatibility between old generations and gen 3) was a very smart move to pick the interest of the player before the important characters are all set up. At first, I didn’t give much thought to the hypervisor stuff, but by the end of the game I was so invested on what as going on it made me think about what this game had that most other fan projects fail to accomplish similar results.

Most Pokémon games with similar ideas ended up being 1) way too serious for its own good or 2) way too cynical and self-aware to actually work. The thing about SPEE is how the game is not afraid to explore its ideas without forcing an overly edgy/dramatic mood in the player nor depreciating its own effort in building a competent plot.

Feels like Super Pokémon Eevee Edition is always walking on that thin line between being well humored and serious when the game needs to be serious while using a lot of ideas that would make me drop a game immediately for most of its best moments. But why does it work?

If I had to guess, I would say the game is just too honest. Just like how the gameplay is what it is and instead of hiding, it brings the best the game can to the table, the plot is never downplaying what it is trying to do, never letting things get too dark and at the same time not shying away of some stuff with bad reputation in the community when those tools would have a positive effect in the game’s story.

On top of that, I love the characters a lot. Most of them are an over exaggeration of what we expect, but they work so well! Team Rocket always cracks a smile on my face and Silver is so freaking cool! He starts like the petty thug we expect from playing GSC, but his passion for Pokémon shines thought his encounters in a very natural flow. It really feels nice to find him again and again and every time he is enjoying the journey just a bit more than last time and man… that last fight is so heartbreaking. I make Gold’s last words before the battle mine.
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All in all, I was expecting a fun game, but I did not think I was just about to play my favorite Pokémon fan game of all times. When I saw Gold unintentionally enabling gen 3 Pokémon and those same mons appearing on new and old routes, or when I finally activated day and night cycle and the game just put that whole new mechanic into play I really felt in love with this project. The lengths the game was willing to go to deliver its ideas in conjunction with the great battles, good plot and amazing exploration really spoke to me in a very deep level, such a nice breath of fresh air! SPEE doesn’t work despite being a RM2k3 project, it works BECAUSE it’s a RM2k3 project and all I can say is…
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