>>56781062This was the rant I threw together. Here is a more official review of Special Episode 0: In a Dark Past.
The Positives:
For the most part dungeon gameplay was very balanced, and every defeat felt fair (excluding the Gulpin dungeon and the injured Dusknoir dungeons). Most of the cutscenes were dynamic and lively. It was quite clear that he put a great deal of time and effort into the scripting. I’d also like to point out the one scene I actually liked. When Duskull was talking to Espeon about why he didn’t want to restore the planet, their reasoning was sound and nuanced. Personally, I loathe it when humans appear in PMD, but this story requires that one shows up. I think they handled it the best way possible under the circumstances.
The Negatives:
I won’t sugarcoat it, I hate this story with every fiber of my being. First, Rampardos is an F-tier antagonist for the main game. Don’t get me wrong, I like edge; however, the lengths this hack goes to show how evil and fucked up Rampardos is borders on comedy. (The image attached to >>56781062 comes from the hack and it looks like it came straight out of a .exe game.) All the character amounts to is a guy who lusts for power, a very cliché and uninteresting motivation in my opinion.
It was a real kick in the balls to watch Gulpin die after going through that horrible dungeon. The fact the Gulpin dungeon had ghost types to snipe you from the walls was an egregious oversight. Every character aside from Duskull and Treecko dying basically all at once added to the unnecessary edge and just felt rushed because the creator wanted to move on with the story. On a side note, the future is implied to be several generations after the present, so having characters like Old Man Torkoal and Diglett show up in the dark future doesn’t make a lot of sense.
(1/2)
