Quoted By:
After nearly 25 years on this earth, I have finally finished my first Explorers of Sky playthough (please clap). Still need to do the Special Episodes, but the main story at least is done.
My biggest fear before starting is that I was too jaded to feel anything at the end. Most anons into pmd played this game at a young and impressionable age, and thus it had a big impact on them; here I am playing it for the first time in my mid 20s. I'm glad to say that I'm not too far gone and I actually felt some emotion at the end, but it's not gonna have any lasting impact on me. I've seen the same thing done better elsewhere. I actually got more worked up after Apple Woods than I got emotional during the end. I can definitely see how the game is more endearing to those who played it for the first time as a kid rather than as a young adult, though it saddens me that I'll never feel the same way about it as most PMD fans do because of that. Is this FOMO of some sort? I'll pin it on never having gotten attached to the characters, and consider Abridgestery Dungeon as filling that role for me lmao.
In terms of the gameplay, it took me a while to get used to that kind of gameplay, and it made getting through the early parts of the game a slog as I was adjusting, and I ended up putting the game down for weeks at a time before finally finishing it over the last few days. Pikachu player and Vulpix partner, ending at lv 35 for each. Definitely got easier at the end; I wiped Primal Dialga first try in like 15 total turns at most, but then again I had two sleep seeds, a stun seed, agility, and a partner with imprison. Made for a rather anticlimactic end. Only died 2 or 3 times through the course of the story, all before chapter 15.
Hot takes: Through the Sea of Time is more emotional than Don't Ever Forget, and the final Grovyle/Dusknoir cutscene before Temporal Tower is more emotional than the ending to the main story. Overall verdict on the game: s'alright.
