Completed Pokémon: A Star in the Desert

Walter Teigan said:

Having completed the game, here are my thoughts

I very much enjoyed the game. The story was well paced for its length, it was an interesting approach to kind of scrap the randomized dungeon aspect (though that may have been a technical necessity) and all the little side quests around town and the way completing missions expanded the community really made the world feel real.

There are a few critiques though. In my opinion, a mystery dungeon game lives or dies on its story and there were a few issues I had. Arc and Simia never really had a conclusion to their story. While Emboar did get arrested, there's no indication of what happened with them at all.

Second, the final fight was improperly scripted. Having the battle system work like in the main series means that gameplay is slower than mystery dungeon. You're going to be around level 32 by that fight if you never bothered grinding much, and everyone else is faster and higher level than you. Every single turn there will be three attacks before yours along with all the dialogue that comes with them. This gets tiring, since the blaze duo and Emboar each take 3 hits if you have Sobbie keep rain dance up. There's no real strategy to this either. Just attack attack attack.

Third, reviver seeds. In a normal mystery dungeon game, they activate immediately from the bag, but here they're just revives with the property of berries. If you're not holding one, you have to burn a turn to activate one, and since you only have two pokemon, using one from the bag wastes your entire turn. There is no incentive to hold any item other than a reviver seed in this game.

At the end, Star in the Desert hinted there would be more to this setting and the foundations set by this game show that there is more to tell. Snubbul mentioned a dungeon we never went to. That eelektrik came from up in the mountains and stuck around for a while. We don't know why we were sent here in the first place. All of these questions can be answered in future installments and I eagerly await their development

Keep up the good work!

Click to expand...

Walter Teigan said:

Having completed the game, here are my thoughts

I very much enjoyed the game. The story was well paced for its length, it was an interesting approach to kind of scrap the randomized dungeon aspect (though that may have been a technical necessity) and all the little side quests around town and the way completing missions expanded the community really made the world feel real.

There are a few critiques though. In my opinion, a mystery dungeon game lives or dies on its story and there were a few issues I had. Arc and Simia never really had a conclusion to their story. While Emboar did get arrested, there's no indication of what happened with them at all.

Second, the final fight was improperly scripted. Having the battle system work like in the main series means that gameplay is slower than mystery dungeon. You're going to be around level 32 by that fight if you never bothered grinding much, and everyone else is faster and higher level than you. Every single turn there will be three attacks before yours along with all the dialogue that comes with them. This gets tiring, since the blaze duo and Emboar each take 3 hits if you have Sobbie keep rain dance up. There's no real strategy to this either. Just attack attack attack.

Third, reviver seeds. In a normal mystery dungeon game, they activate immediately from the bag, but here they're just revives with the property of berries. If you're not holding one, you have to burn a turn to activate one, and since you only have two pokemon, using one from the bag wastes your entire turn. There is no incentive to hold any item other than a reviver seed in this game.

At the end, Star in the Desert hinted there would be more to this setting and the foundations set by this game show that there is more to tell. Snubbul mentioned a dungeon we never went to. That eelektrik came from up in the mountains and stuck around for a while. We don't know why we were sent here in the first place. All of these questions can be answered in future installments and I eagerly await their development

Keep up the good work!

Click to expand...