I eventually decided to give Rejuv a chance because, despite not liking Reborn, I enjoyed Desolation so I decided all 3 needed judged on their own merits. So far, I've felt very little resistance. I'm just past the first major Team Xen encounter and everything thus far has been strangely easy. I am playing on Classic, before anyone asks. Does it get harder when you get past the beginning?
I deleted the previous post because:
Short version. I played Reborn blind, used 17 total mons all game, and found the main source of difficulty was the ability to solve and analyze encounters based off of team composition and fields. None of these puzzles ever presented me a considerable road block as I solved all of them in minutes. What was left was busywork optimization and repeating the same battle until the pre-determined line lined up.
I came to Reborn expecting "difficult Pokemon game with a twist." What I got was something that is almost of another genre that failed to be engaging in the way it was intended.
This is meant more as general game feedback than asking for a solution. I'm pretty convinced the only way I could make Reborn fun to me is by stripping away everything that makes it Reborn. I'm not really looking for suggestions or even discussions. I just wanted to put this out there after I was bitterly disappointed but still persisted to the end anyway.
This will probably be the last thing I post. No reason to beat this dead horse any further.
I completed the main game, as I said in another post. As Reborn is very popular and I could never understand why based on my bad experience with it, I began to ask why it was I wasn't enjoying it, really. I love Pokemon and hard games, so I really wanted to like Reborn. But I just... can't. And now I know why.
As I said before in a previous post, the gameplay loop for most of the major bosses is as follows:
Gather information either by doing trial battles or via outside guides
Decode a solution to the battle based on the team and field present
Execute until your plan works, using F12 to reset each time
Clearly, the intended challenge lies mostly in step 2, the solving step. The issue? That step was so easy and trivial to me it took all of 2 minutes to do it. So what was I left with? A bunch of tedium and not much payoff. This left me with a surprising conclusion. Pokemon Reborn was too easy.
Not sure what would remedy that. People claim the game gets harder the further you go, but that never occurred in any meaningful way. I also never played the way people say you should.
I caught few Pokemon and had only 15 raised and optimized mons total by the end.
I used no outside resources.
I used few or no meta Pokemon
And I STILL thought the puzzle solving was too easy.
Here was my full roster:
Delphox
Ampharos
Toxicroak
Hawlucha
Azumarill
Walrein
Throh
Sandslash (Kanto)
Golem (Kanto)
Noivern
Seismitoad
Sylveon
Drapion
Togedamaru
Arcanine
Bonus: A Pidgeotto and a Mightyena I stopped using before EV training was necessary
So my conclusion? If the analysis is easy to you, Reborn has nothing of value to give. It's not good at being an "easy" game. Strip away the intellectual game, and all that's left is boredom. It was like the video game equivalent of doing math homework.
Should the game receive a hard mode? Maybe. But the game has a difficulty curve already but the gameplay loop never changed for me, so it's hard to say it would make a difference.
I've been highly critical in my past post. This one isn't quite that. I just want to know what truly constitutes "beating" the game? I just became Champion and watched the credits. Beaten in a traditional sense. But does the Postgame have enough structured story to say it's a continuation of the main story? Is it kind of like Mystery Dungeon where you beat, say, Rayquaza to beat the main story, but then there's a bunch of loosely storied dungeons after that?
For context, I wrote this post on r/PokemonReborn
https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonReborn/comments/1tvdvs0/perspective_of_a_blind_first_playthrough/
I just wanna know. How much does Rejuvenation resemble Reborn when played on Classic Mode? And would I have the same complaints?
By a "blind playthrough" I mean no googling, no spreadsheets, just me playing Reborn on a first (and likely only) run. This is partially intentional, and partially because I didn't know these things were available. I did not EV optimize until before Sampson and my IVs are not optimal. Natures mostly not optimal either. I also have not used any synthetic seeds. This is my base team, though I've had to change it around sometimes:
Delphox
Ampharos
Drapion
Sylveon
Seismitoad
Flex Slot
I've just beaten Adrienn. So what's the experience been like? Well, I would divide it based on two categories of battles, those being:
Category 1 is mostly just "hard Pokemon" in the sense that I enjoy. Your opponent has a strong team, roughly on par with yours, and you win by being a better battler. This is much closer to what I would look for in a Pokemon game, or just gaming in general. Hard but fair.
Category 2 is where the game falls off for me. These battles have all followed this formula:
Step 1. Do about 3-4 test battles where I have no chance of winning to see what mons the opponent has, what items they have, how they interact with the field, and what moves they'll use in response to what I do.
Step 2. Change and optimize my team to counter them.
Step 3. Script a pre-planned battle where 3-4 things, at minimum, need to go my way to win usually with one mon left at red hp. These can range from Ciel needing to knock out my Drapion with Air Slash and not Revelation Dance to needing to land Sheer Cold against Terra's Palossand and Adrien's Mawile.
Step 4: Reset until the RNG lines up and I win.
Category 2 plays much more like a Pokemon puzzle than a Pokemon game. The gameplay loop is closer to something like Run & Bun and/or a Kaizo Rom Hack. There's a crowd for this, but unfortunately, I'm not in that crowd. This type of gameplay just... isn't that interesting to me. It's not a skill issue. I've beaten 14 gyms in Reborn and 8 in Desolation.
From a narrative perspective, Category 2 kills my immersion. You're supposed to be this freakish, genius prodigy who's beating all these elite trainers on the first try. But whether you're manually scouting like I do, or consulting spreadsheets and resources online, beating these battles generally requires some degree of prior knowledge. So in universe, the idea you're beating them blind on the first try just isn't feasible unless you're some sort of omniscient space wizard.
As for field effects, I've found that in Category 1 battles, they're largely irrelevant. In Category 2, they amount to either me needing to bring something to destroy the field, or more likely, change my pre-script to accommodate it. Fields have never really added anything positive to my experience. They usually amount to just another variable in an equation.
I'm too far into Reborn to quit now. But I'm not likely to play it a second time. The pre-scripted puzzle battles are too vexing, and the game is incredibly long. Would I recommend it to anyone? Yes. Hardcore Kaizo players come to mind. But not someone who just wants a challenging Pokemon game.
