#idk what else to say i already said a lot and i'm really hungry vhkjhkl

[ravenwolfie97]

alright, first things first, i gotta introduce you to my three brand new rescue teams!

Red Team Gooseberry: Duck the Psyduck & Chikorita (no name) Blue Team Fireflower: Leif the Bulbasaur & Cinder the Cyndaquil DX Team Epoch Spark: Tori the Torchic & Sparky the Pikachu

all of the teams ended up having some kind of interesting thing to them for Gooseberry, i don't think i've ever played as a Psyduck before and i neglected to give Chikorita a nickname for Fireflower, i chose Cyndaquil over Torchic as my partner here because i love both Bulbasaur and Cyndaquil a lot as starters and thought it would be nice to have my two faves together and for Epoch Spark, funny enough, from the quiz I actually got Psyduck again, but since this is a newer PMD game I had the option to freely choose as well. and after much deliberation, i decided on Torchic and thought it would be kind of funny to have my partner be a Pikachu - i purposefully chose her species, gender, and name because my very first PMD team had the protagonist as a girl Pikachu. and choosing Torchic was not just a gut decision, but also to 1. round out the protagonists' types and 2. to reference the human-turned-pokemon in the PMD manga Ginji's Rescue Team which i love and cherish dearly

anyway, i started by going through the first dungeon of the game and getting our rescue team formed, and here are some of the things i noticed between the old and the new:

first, i should mention the quiz, or more specifically the pokemon selection screens. i do find it very funny that all the pokemon are just jimmying around wildly, but it also was. just a lot of sensory input. i will give it credit where it's due - it is a lot more interesting than just selecting from a list! but i do feel like Gates and Super had it better with a literal rotating cast rather than a chaotic cloud of bustling lil guys

what i thought was interesting out the gate was the fact that barely any of the text in-game is altered. it's the exact same dialogue for most of the time, with the exception of a few additional scenes not present in the old games, like a partially verbalized tutorial and when you put on the scarves as a uniform for the rescue team - which, by the way, was super cute

speaking of text, i don't know what exactly my reasoning is for being against it, but i find the little speech bubbles in dungeons to be really annoying. it's a fun idea conceptually to have more of an inner monologue as you roam around and fight and stuff, but having something to say every time you fight or get attacked is just… too much. i didn't see an option to turn them off but i kind of hope there is one and i just didn't see it

there is a pretty steep mechanical difference between the two that is very evident when playing them side-by-side. DX is mechanically very similar to Super, and given that i haven't touched Super in a few years it took me a while to remember that this wasn't completely novel and in fact something i had to get used to before. and also while i knew the movesets got more beefy and diverse as time went on in the franchise, i forgot just how robust the movesets you get out the gate are nowadays. back in the day, Pikachu knew exactly what it would in the main series games at Lv. 5: Thunder Shock, Growl, and Tail Whip. but now, in DX, my Pikachu knows Fake Out, Electro Ball, Grass Knot, and Iron Tail! like that's insanity!! and you can't even use a basic A-button attack anymore, but that's one of the things you're immediately taught in Blue/Red! it's gonna be a weird thing to juggle back and forth, i think

i noticed there was a "Random" button when making the rescue team name, and i absolutely love it. i only went through a handful of choices but they were all really good and fun and some in particular were very silly. it was very charming i will say, though - the default was "Efficiency" and it was so incredibly close to my first team's name "Electricy" (bc Electricity was too long to fit) and it really threw me hkjjk

after listening to all three iterations of that handful of sound tracks at the beginning, especially for Tiny Woods, i still feel like DX missed the mark somewhat. i will say that the version heard in Red was closer, but it's still very well mixed in Blue. DX just has issues with the relationships between timbres and between instruments' dynamics, as i've heard in a couple of its other OST remakes. it's not as offensive in person, but it's still a bit too over the top

one of the reasons i hesitated so much on getting DX was because of the aesthetics. it's radically different from any previous PMD game, and evokes kind of a storybook feeling. playing it for myself now, as far as i've gotten, i'm not the most into it, but i do appreciate it. i think my main issue is that it feels kind of unpolished and also quite cramped. the 3d renditions of 2d spaces just feels very small, and the 3d games before this didn't have that issue at all, so i feel like it's either to do with the dev team being different than previous installations, or more than likely it's just because they're struggling to adapt something from the past rather than coming up with environments and scenarios wholecloth

i do find it kind of incredible and amusing seeing the progression of how games have changed in the last 15 years, like seeing a language select at the top of Rescue Team DX, and the fact that it autosaves so it doesn't need to include the tutorial scene in the original that teaches you to go to bed to save. i just think that's really neat :3

i think that's it concerning the first impressions. overall, i'm actually most fascinated by what hasn't changed than what has. i would have expected an updated dialogue beyond adding scenes for the more modern demographic of PMD players instead of what is essentially a copy-paste from the original games. and i know it is copy-paste because i Just read it twice over in both Red and Blue just before booting up the new game! idk if that's a bad thing, but it's strange to me that it is so unaltered. i dunno, my feelings so far are mixed, but i've only just gotten started, so we'll see what comes next!