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Just finished Explorers of the Spirit. Gotta say that it was better than I expected considering it is the first lengthy PMD original story hack.
>The good
-Story was good despite part of it being recycled from Explorers due to the nature of the plot
-I was fully expecting edgy or cringy shit since it is so common in mainline Pokémon story hacks, but thankfully it doesn't have any of that crap
-Some QoL added in the gameplay like not losing anything when failing dungeons
-Protagonist is rather unique by PMD standards, while the partner gets some development to make him less dependent
-Wasn't buggy to me or mechanically clunky like some romhacks can be
>The bad
-Takes quite a long time for the story to really diverge from Explorers' as that only really happens at the Guild Expedition. Until then it's just some minor changes and extra scenes
-A bit of shitty padding like "Hey I need to talk to you, so first let's go though this big dungeon even though we could have this talk in a easier to reach place"
-Rather clunky/rushed ends to some plotlines (Grovyle), and the ending could have used some extra scenes regarding the protagonist
>Bad? Up to you
-Story goes to a very different direction from Explorers' but you still end up going through most of the locations from it and the finale still happens in Temporal Tower. I guess it's kinda justifiable due to the setting being the same
-No real postgame. After beating it you just get thrown back at the entrance of the final dungeon. The "postgame" is just a couple of challenge dungeons (that are references to other PMD hacks)
-Has a segment where you have to go through like 6 dungeons in a row without being able to use the town services aside from storage
-The "big twist" is made very obvious from the start by the dialogue, but I think that is intentional
-Ending doesn't go for the emotional discharge of PMD endings, so don't expect it
-You can tell that the writer really likes Breloom
