Keep in mind this is my personal playthrough experience. It probably won't be yours, and that's normal. It's all opinions!!!
Overall, the concept for this was really cute and plays the "Escape" theme really well. Maybe its because I'm a college student that I can relate to the dread of facing the final boss that is student debt. Like, I think this concept could've been really really cool and I'm a bit sad that Jam constraints possibly pegged it down a bit. The game pretty much plays like a typical Pokémon game with 5 Gyms and an Elite 2. The story pretty much is nonexistent outside of the few encounters with the rival, which was a bummer.
like, I'm only saying this because I actually really really dig the initial concept of the game. It's novel and unique. The reason I slogged through the game was because I really wanted to see how it ended, but uh... That was unfortunate. I was thinking something like, you could return to University to pay off your debt a little bit at a time while undergoing the League Challenge from various ways (since trainers give you money too) and then the League Challenge would be "completing the game shortcut". but moving on, i need to address the balancing:
The balancing is incredibly rough. I can play hard Pokémon cuz ya girl's good at video games but uh, this one was a bit excessive and at times wasn't fun. I'll go in-depth Gym by Gym.
1st Gym:
Average Level - 8
The level curve shoots up to 12 with the Gym Leader's Pidgeotto when my Pokémon were level 7-8 with minimal grinding. This by itself is a pretty big issue (because all the 'mons 1HKO/2HKOs everything), but the biggest issue was not being able to grind at all to catch up. I think there's an EXP feature where the EXP drastically goes down depending on the level difference, and so while I ran out of trainers, the Wild Pokémon were level 2-4. I got absolutely no experience from grinding the grass. This means the solution to train up for the leader is to suicide intentionally to grind on the Leader's first two Pokémon and train that way. I did find Shinx and Pikachu in the wild grass, which helped (Pikachu is the savior of this playthrough in general) but I couldn't grind them past level 7, so they still got knocked out quite quickly. A rule of note is that pretty much nobody likes grinding in Game Jam games.
There are two possible ways to alleviate this, reduce the level and smoothen it out, or increase everything before the gym. I think for a short jam game, the former is more reasonable, or you could possibly do the latter but increase the EXP gain if a level 7-8 Gym is too awkward. It's also worth mentioning that the low level Pokémon means you can't catch them by weakening them, you have to catch them in one throw. Since losing to the Gym Leaders kills your wallet, you could potentially just straight up get stuck when you run out of balls and everyone is too low level to catch up and you're out of trainers. If everything above was adjusted, this Gym Leader would've been pretty fair. The Pokémon weren't crazy strong or anything, they were just too high leveled.
2nd Gym:
Average Level - 13
Immediately after the first gym, the level curve shoots back down to 8, which is really weird considering we beat a level 12 Pidgeotto. Yes, Gym Leaders are supposed to be more difficult than your average trainer, but the curve should've been like this in general! If the Gym Leader had a level 9 Pidgeotto (just for example's sake), it'd be a more sensible progression. The Route Pokémon are also still too low at this point, which makes catching/light grinding a bit annoying.
The 2nd Gym has way too many trainers as well as way too many Pokémon for each. Of course, I needed the EXP since it's pretty hard to get in this game, but I would've preferred if there were less battles, more EXP for each, y'know? Also, every Pokémon having Sturdy was kind of a slog for my Machop to go through lmao. The game was just literally slowing me down, just a small thing to consider! Not everything has to be rough and annoying to be difficult or a challenge! In general, I wouldn't be afraid to give trainers only 1 Pokémon. Everyone has so many Pokémon and they also had a minimum of two.
Overall, Machop was carrying pretty hard, but the Pokémon were still a few levels higher than me. And then you throw out the Level 22 Solrock as one of the Gym Leader's Pokémon...
:v
I beat it with a combination of Thunder Wave on Pikachu, Sand Attack on Eevee, and a lot of hax. I had to make sure nobody died beforehand, and after about 5-6 wipe outs, I was able to beat it. Thankfully, it's moveset wasn't that special, but it's definitely grossly overleveled. It'd be okay for like a singular boss fight by itself, but this was a whole trainer battle (which had Super Potions too :v) where it was just way too much. There's nothing I can really say for this part besides a recommendation to work out a level curve in a future project.
3rd Gym:
Average Level - 16
The rival battle after this has Pokémon in the levels as high as 19, when my Pokémon are still level 15-16. Rough rough battle, but managed to do it. The trainer straight after this battle has Pokémon in the level 16s. This is what the curve should have been for everyone before this tbh.
I'll go over the Route here because I found it pretty difficult though. You did the "Pokémon at 2nd stages that don't normally evolve this early" route which while I know Gamefreak does it, it manages to be incredibly challenging here. The evolved Pokémon has vastly higher base stats than yours, so they kicked everyone's ass with STAB Poison moves and whatnot. I would recommend not doing this for random route Trainers or even at the consistency they appear in this game. It's just kind of needlessly difficult for the sake of difficulty. The Route Pokémon here are pretty on par at least, but they too were still as high level as my Pokémon, so it made fighting them difficult too. I caught an Aron to help me here, and it did.
I personally think it's a bit cheap to have to catch a very specific Pokémon for an area or else it becomes incredibly hard. Yes, that's technically thoughtful game design, but Pokémon is about having options and not being able to have that slot of an option (because you're going to have to waste time leveling it to stand a chance at the same time) is kind of a bummer. My suggestion would probably to figure out ways to tackle the Gyms and routes in multiple directions without necessarily having to grind a new Pokémon for them. Good early debuffs (like Charm or Will-o-Wisp), niche cool techniques (Trick Room) to use, more berries, etc. It's a fangame, so technically pretty much anything can be edited for previously existing 'mons!!
I think this route was really chill and comfortable though! I really liked it, bar all the crazy trainers.
We reach the 3rd Gym, where everyone is 4 levels higher than my team. The Gym Leader is incredibly difficult, mostly because while the levels aren't as crazy as they used to be, they now have ridiculously strong STAB moves, which made it arguably more difficult than the Rock Gym Leader. The Sawsbuck (that doesn't evolve that early btw) with Take Down/Jump Kick pretty much OHKO'd everything that wasn't Aron or Koffing, the latter being easily 2HKO'd while my Sludge Bomb only does 33%. The solution? I soft reset over and over until I got a Poison Hax, then use Aron and hope it misses Jump Kick. Then, I had to deal with the Leafeon, who was pretty tanky and fast, and the Roserade, who one shot everything with Magical Leaf except for Koffing. Magical Leaf really really hurt because I was relying on Sand Attack on all of my Pokémon to get through the game, and it never misses. Ended up beating it though!
4th Gym:
Average Level - 25
At this point, my biggest issues were the level curve constantly being 4 levels higher than me while everyone has illegal fully evolved Pokémon, while my only Pokémon that's evolved is Combusken. Machop is still a few levels away, Thunderstone doesn't exist, Eevee isn't getting a Friendship evolution any time soon,Aron is very far away from 32. Having to fight a level 30 Swampert as a level 27 Combusken was kinda cheap :v.
I don't remember anything of note from this Gym. It was pretty simple.
Elite 1 and the Champion:
Average Level - 28
Everyone was ridiculously overleveled, but Combusken with Bulk Up along with Pikachu and Eevee were the MVPs of this stage of the game. I recorded a video of my fight versus the Champion with a lot of my thought processes along the way! Check it out below!
![[K]arma Badge](/data/medal/104_1641428355l.jpg)
