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doubleddenden · 4 years

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I think I'm in the final stretch of Nexomon Extinction. What a wild ride it's been. I'm definitely going to check out Nexomon 1 on steam when I finish Extinction.

For anyone waving it off because it's a Pokemon clone, don't. Seriously, we're all cool with Halo, Doom, Call of Duty, Battlefield, and thousands of more shooters literally being copy paste mechanics. Platformers are inherently similar as well. Collectathons especially.

Instead of calling it a clone, I'd say it's a parody, or more of a newer genre quietly cropping up in the last few years: pokemonlike. Pokemon was already a sub branch of JRPG, and pokemonlikes follow the same method of over 100 monsters to catch with set evolution paths, some form of type system, and turn based mechanics. Theres tweaks to make it different enough, just like Pokemon has tweaks to make it different from Dragon Quest.

Here's what makes Nexomon Extinction worth it for me:

The battle system is familiar but has slight tweaks. A stamina bar instead of PP, moves are hardly one shot kills, the typing system is much simpler with each monster having one type with its strengths and weaknesses, a smarter AI that swaps out on you, and overall a bigger focus on strategy than just Spam Super Effective to win (its here too mind you, but you'll run out of Stamina before you'll sweep a team)

The world is very free and open. Literally before I got the bronze tamer badge at the beginning, I had explored a big chunk of the world already. There's some places hidden behind story, but those are very few and far between. Literally a character was like "HEY DON'T GO IN THERE ITS DANGEROUS" and CoCo was like "what if we did anyway?" And I did. And it was cool as hell.

The game scales its levels with you. It's meant to be challenging, it's not a snooze fest like Pokemon XY or SwSh, but at the same time this means 2 things: 1, go anywhere at your own pace and its usually going to be the perfect level for your team, no matter how far you stray from the story. 2, as you progress, the entire world does, so you can find monsters and tamers that match your levels no matter where you go. It's so fun constantly having a challenge.

Lots of character options. Not really customization, but there's lots of designs to choose from to be your main. I stuck with the original because I like spiky hair and capes.

The catching mechanics are SIMILAR to pokemon but improved on, imo. You have your standard beat em up til they get in the red, and you can toss a Nexotrap, BUT unlike Pokemon, Nexomon's capture system gives you a percentage probability of success. You can increase success by giving certain statuses, having certain items in your inventory, having the correct Nexotrap to match its type, and feeding the monster its favorite foods. It's kind of a relief because I'm not sitting there hurling balls and hoping it clicks. I'm able to accurately gauge its success AND THEN throw the trap. The only downside is the quicktime buttons.

The art. Holy shit, especially in battle. The overworld sprites take a bit to get used to, but in game sprites look SO GOOD and move SO FLUIDLY, and attack animations are gorgeous. There's also the nice touch of having character portraits that look pretty decent. Every location looks so good, too, and so vibrant.

Music is pretty great. Right now I have the trainer battle stuck in my head. Every city and route has it's own music that is very atmospheric to listen to and adds to the experience.

It's a self aware parody that knows its parodying pokemon and jrpgs in general, and the jokes LAND man. CoCo the cat is like "yeah sure send the kids into the forest, that's SUCH a good idea" or "its almost as if the game devs ran out of budget."

I don't know if it's just me, but like 90% of the 381 monsters are just great, man. I can hardly think of any that isn't cute or cool looking in some way or another. There's some that's definitely inspired by pokemon, but honestly I don't mind. I'm not here to defend GF, I'm here for a good time since GF thinks it's okay to give us Eiscue and Inteleon and say it's good. Nope, nuhuh, there's 9 starters here and all of them are better than the gen 8 starters.

Side quests. Lots of them. Gives something fun to do. I'm also going to include neato fun dungeons that have hidden vaults in them. You don't have to do em, but I reccomend em anyway.

The story is interesting without hand holding or rail roading. It trusts the player to do what they want and come back eventually. CoCo even makes it a point to remind us with "hey, she said go north, but we could also check out the east if we want :)" quite regularly. Even then the story catches you right from the beginning with interesting characters that don't immediately start kissing your ass. In fact, you have to earn their respect in most cases, which I very much enjoy. There's lots of tense moments that go over the top in a way that I'm not used to for this type of game. Now this story is technically a sequel, but honestly I've found no problems getting through it without having played Nexomon 1, and honestly I think its neat piecing together the story.

The price. Really weird I know, but I've gotten about 24 hours out of it so far with a bunch more to come. It cost $20 on steam and $30 on switch and ps4, and yet I feel like ive gotten so much more bang for my buck. I hope the devs got paid fairly because holy shit, they deserve some credit.

The devs actively listen to feedback and fix it. They have free updates planned as well. They own their mistakes and even make fun of it. It's so refreshing. Pokemon would rather rush a game out with a problem to sell a solution later, or ignore negative feedback.

I'm literally having far more fun in a pokemonlike than I've had in 2 pokemon switch games, and honestly maybe even the 3ds? Still debating. Its almost as if i got a sneak peak at Pokemon if assholes didn't bash gen 5, because this game feels and plays how a proper pokemon game should have evolved. The sprites are so much more dynamic than the lifeless dolls with 2d texture faces, the characters actually have LIVES that are more than just POKEMON ARE NEAT POKEMON ARE GREAT I LOVE POKEMON I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH THE POWER OF POKEMON. In fact some people scream at you for breaking into their homes. There's politics at play in some cases. There's a ghost town with ghost ghosts dealing with being ghosts. Pokemon forgot somewhere along the Switch what it's like to make a game that isn't just to please stock holders and rushed to meet deadlines. Extinction has the spirit of Pokemon and more Jrpgs that lost their love and creativity of the series AND the fun behind it all. It really proves to me the only real good thing about SwSh was the battle system and DLC, because Nexomon Extinction proves that the battle system is literally the only crutch gen 8 had to stand on, and basically anyone can do it now.

God. I know it's a parody, but jesus it's such a good game. Nexomon, I hope to see more games in the future. I know it'll never be wildly successful, but by god I fell in love with monster catcher games again.

9/10 please try it and support the devs. If you liked the ds games I guarantee you'll like this game.

#nexomon Extinction #nexomon #doubled plays games #den reviews stuff

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doubleddenden · 4 years

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I’m fairly deep into Nexomon 1 now, and can give a bit of a fairer assessment. I say “fairer” since I somehow jumped 500 something battles since yesterday.

All in all, not bad. Not quite Extinction, but not bad. Full review below.

It’s definitely not as polished or original as its sequel is, and the monster designs aren’t quite on the same tier as Extinction either, but overall its fun when you find your groove. I will say, the beginning is oddly difficult with tamers owning monsters around level 12 ish that shouldn’t evolve until their 30′s, but manageable. I’ve only blacked out once so far, more than I’ve blacked out in my entirety of Extinction.

Unlike Extinction which is DEFINITELY a parody that finds great joy in making fun of itself, yet also gives a very original take on the pokemon-like formula, Nexomon 1 gives the player a bit more of a rough, Pokemon fan-game experience. Extinction is very open and lets you have your fun just exploring in any direction you want, while 1 is much more linear with a Point A to Point B formula with very little way to go around this. In addition, the monsters are fixed levels per area, versus how Extinction has the world grow with you. The items, shop, and healing center are much more on the nose with its inspirations as well. (There’s roller skates, exp share, a fishing rod, and probably more)

In addition, 1 has a few mechanical differences. Nexomon heal after leveling up, there’s an EXP share item you can find that functions basically how you’d expect it to from a Gen 6 or 7 Pokemon game with the option to turn it off (odd that you find it about 4 overseers in but hey, it works), and perhaps the trickiest is that while you generally get to attack first, foes will ALWAYS get a free hit in whenever you knock out a Nexomon of theirs and they switch in. There’s no feeding or extra Nexotraps either, you’re literally left with the basic trap or the golden trap with no way to increase odds. Extinction added cores, which I’m definitely missing here. Lastly, Extinction added Ghost and Psychic types which are absent in One, and a few Nexomon that are in the sequel are different typings in this game. I played on Steam as well, this is after I had it for android but had to delete due to my poor cell service- anyway, it was originally a smartphone game, and you can kind of tell.

Is this bad? Not necessarily. I’m still having fun here. Its definitely not an exploration driven game, though. Luckily, the story is pretty decent enough to keep you in. Speaking of, Extinction was a pretty on-the-nose comedy that made fun of itself and other RPGs (especially Pokemon), whereas 1 is pretty genuine in trying to present itself as serious. Not to say there’s not any gags, but its far fewer than the sequel has. In a way, Extinction knows what it is, an homage to older Pokemon games with a few original and imo better takes on certain aspects, and its not going to try for originality, which is fine and WORKS for it. Nexomon 1 is a fine game on its own, but it both tries way too hard to be a Pokemon clone AND original at the same time. Like I said, capable, and the plot is good, but Extinction definitely is the better of the two.

Some gripes I have with Nexomon 1:

The traps hardly feel worth the use most of the time. Without a way to increase odds, it often feels more trouble to catch Nexomon unless you go Gold for that 100% catch rate, but the Golden traps are harder to come by. Normal traps feel less powerful than a Pokeball in traditional Pokemon games tbh. There’s some cases where I’m wrong, but most of the time I find myself wasting 2 or 3 traps to catch a monster. Of course status ailments help, but those aren’t guaranteed to land in this game. Thankfully this is fixed in Extinction with more trap types and feeding or other mechanics to increase your odds.

Ironically related, but unless you set out to grind (which I strongly suggest you do at some point), you’ll often find it easier to just replace your current team mates with Nexomon you encounter in the wild. For instance, let’s say you’re grinding a wind type that’s about level 10, and you want it to be level 15 like the rest of your party: More often than not you’d just find a level 12 or 16 wind type in the wild, and sometimes its just easier to catch that than grind. Once you grind it out with a team you enjoy, you’ll find yourself doing this less, but at the beginning (like around the first 3 over seers) you’ll find yourself doing it a lot. Extinction kind of has this issue too, but its not as prevalent.

The sucker punch switch-in mechanic is cheap tbh. I can’t tell if its a feature or a glitch they let slide, but it honestly comes off as crappy whenever I waste a foe and then its replacement sucker punches my guy out of its last HP. Extinction almost had this, but after complaining it was patched out. One however still has this mechanic.

Exploration is severely limited. Sure there’s one or two off paths you can take or a few loop paths that can lead you to the same place, but its mostly just... Not as free. It reminds me of a 2d SwSh in that regard, and that’s bad. Again, fixed in Extinction.

Now, some good things to say

Great characters. To be honest I think I like a few of these characters MORE than some in Extinction. Some are pretty flat, sure, but not every character needs to be deep and complex to enjoy them. The designs are pretty great and their backgrounds are pretty interesting all around as well.

Mostly good designs, 300+ of them again in fact. Sure there’s more bad eggs in the bunch than Extinction, and definitely on par with SwSh for “Oh god go back I SAID GO BACK” evolutions, but for the most part they look pretty solid in their own right. Hell I’ll even say that Nexomon One has an advantage over Extinction because while Extinction had better designs per amount, you could definitely tell some were designed by different designers, whereas One has a more defined and unified style. And I will say, I compare the bad eggs to SwSh’s bad eggs, but let’s be real, even Nexomon’s bad eggs are better than SwSh’s lol.

I appreciate having every monster’s moves selectable from my team’s skill sets rather than having to pay someone to bring them back. There’s definitely room for improvement in how its presented (especially power for each attack not being shown), but tbh I appreciate this method more than tutor methods.

Maybe I just haven’t found it in Extinction yet, but BY GOD THERE’S A REPEL KEY ITEM. Good lord this is a relief.

Combat may not be as pretty as Extinction, but its still fun all around in its own right. While grinding, I found myself getting the trophies for 200, 300, 400, and 500 battles today ALONE. I’ve been playing for 15 hours.

Not quite character customization, but there are alternative player icons to play with like Extinction, which is something I appreciate.

A good challenge. It doesn’t really hold your hand combat wise, in fact it tries to cheat! But when its not being a dirty cheater, it can be wonderfully challenging and makes you think on your toes sometimes. Tamers can sometimes have a type preference BUT often times they have counters to YOUR counters, or just straight up mixed teams. This keeps the game from getting stale and spammy.

I find a lot of my gripes with the game are immediately fixed in Extinction. Extinction is above and beyond an improvement, like say if Gold and Silver were directly followed up by Black and White in terms of combat and overall mechanics. And yes, I am comparing it a lot to Pokemon, because Nexomon is a Pokemon-Like and it isn’t ashamed to wear its influences on its sleeves. That’s honestly a cool thing imo, the battle system is fun when you figure it out and I like collecting monsters that look cool. But yeah, Extinction is a major overhaul to One, but honestly One has its charm to it that makes me happy I picked it up. Its a good time killer anyway.

You can either try it on Steam for about $10, or smart device for free to try, then pay maybe 99 cents to unlock the full game (if memory serves). There’s micro transactions in the mobile version, however. To blance this, there ARE gacha monsters you can get. In the Steam version, the gacha elements and micro transactions are gutted for a more traditional experience, and doesn’t require an internet connection like Mobile.

I’d say if Extinction is a 9/10, Nexomon 1 is about a 7/10. Room for improvement- Which obviously they did! I’m still not finished with the story portion, so I may be in for a surprise. Just be warned that this is not an easy game, especially the beginning.

If you’re curious if you NEED to play Nexomon 1 to play Extinction, you don’t. I started with the mobile version and dropped for a while until Extinction, so I really had no clue what I was getting into. The story for Extinction DOES reference some things that happen in One, but its not in a way that ruins the experience of playing it for the first time. I will say, playing One after Extinction does kind of spoil some of the plot elements, but I think its almost necessary that I gave Extinction a try first, or else I might’ve dropped the series as nothing more than a soulless clone. There’s heart here, definitely.

Is it worth the $6 I paid for it? Hell yeah dude. It normally fetches for $10 on steam, but there was a recent sale. You can either try it on Steam for about $10, or smart device for free to try, then pay maybe 99 cents to unlock the full game (if memory serves). There’s micro transactions in the mobile version, however. To balance this, there ARE gacha monsters you can get. In the Steam version, the gacha elements and micro transactions are gutted for a more traditional experience, and doesn’t require an internet connection like Mobile.

#nexomon #nexomon one #doubled plays games #den reviews stuff

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