 As some of you may remember from my first post about Shadows of Almia, I wasn't really enjoying it, but decided to march on regardless for some rare Pokemon. It may look like a Pokemon game on the outside, but it sure as heck didn't play like one. Gone are the turn based battles, replaced with spinning the stylus around your target. Captured Pokemon are merely temporary, good for one use on the field to remove obstacles that impede your progress, or in battle to assist in capturing something stronger. I decided to play the game one mission at a time to keep myself from getting too annoyed with it, but as the days went on I found myself playing a bit longer each time...
I still absolutely despise the battle system though. XD In my opinion there were only two levels of difficulty: piss easy and 'tear your hair out' annoying. Later Pokemon captures were merely an exercise in patience, as they hopped around the screen at breakneck speed, constantly breaking my styler circles and wasting my time. I lost a total of two times throughout the whole game, once against the first Gem Guardian, because I had no idea what was going on, and the second against Regigigas, which I consider the only truly difficult fight.
 So, what did I actually like? When I hit the Top Ranger rank, I started to enjoy the story and side quests a lot more. At that point you meet more characters, get reunited with Keith and Rhythmi, and Altru Inc starts showing its true colors. I could have just skipped the side quests, but you get Power-up Data for completing them, which made the fights less of a pain. They boost defense, give you a longer styler line, longer Pokemon assist time in battles, and other useful stuff. In one of the post game quests, Murph asks you to come back with all 7 of Eevee's possible evolutions, hence those pictures. =P I was planning to do it for fun, but then I saw that it was an actual quest and thought 'wow, that's cool'. After finishing all the quests, you get a cute cut-scene of the main characters having a picnic.  After finishing the main story and all those side quests, I could have very well stopped and just jumped right into those download missions that I was looking forward to, but no, something made me keep going. Gaming OCD strikes again! I also completed the game's browser, which is pretty much its answer to the Pokedex. There's over 200 critters to catch, with most just out in the open waiting for you to run into them, and others hidden away which require some obstacle clearing to find. You get a short cut-scene on top of the Ranger Union after completing the browser.  Regigigas will only reveal itself once you capture everything else in the game, and for good reason. Like, don't even bother trying to capture it if you don't have all the Power-up Data. A shock wave that takes off over 10 damage shoots out with every step it takes. This is what will hit you the most during the fight. The best way to deal with it to take a party full of Magneton to recharge your HP when you need to, and very carefully draw ovals around the space where the shockwave hits, following Regigigas as it moves to avoid getting hit. Charge up your styler in the corners of the screen while Regigigas does its other attacks, as it's pretty much impossible to draw circles around it during those. So with that finished I decided to hit up the download missions. Thankfully for me I ended up really enjoying most of these. I would have been let down if they were lame, seeing as they were pretty much the reason I bought this game. I didn't take any pictures of them, but no matter, I'll go ahead and describe each one. Let's start with the Special Missions... Dialga in Hia Valley!? - This mission is pretty funny. You and Wendy have to deal with an injured Dialga that's being held at Almia Castle. Take too long to capture it and it'll send you back in time, making the mission loop back to the beginning. I was like 'yeah pfft whatever' when Wendy warned me about taking too long since I didn't see any timer counting down. But then off went Roar of Time and I was reading the mission's intro text once again. All I could do was laugh, and then make my way back to Dialga. Palkia in Haruba Desert!? - Palkia suddenly appears in the Hippowdon Temple and starts wreaking havoc across the whole region by warping space. All the entrances and exits lead to completely different places, so you, Sven, and Henry from Haruba Village have to traverse the maze of randomly linked locations until you finally make it to Palkia and capture it. It was pretty fun hopping all over the place. It was like a tour of the Almia region. :D For the Bride and Shaymin! - Two characters (guess who!) are getting married, and it turns out the bride's bouquet is actually a Shaymin. Some Team Dim Sun goons crash the party to try and capture it which leads to a wild goose chase in Pueltown. That part was boring since you're just running back and forth checking everything that looks like a bunch of flowers. When you finally do find and corner Shaymin, the capture is an absolute joke. At least the wedding went well. And the Extra Missions, which let you transfer the starring Pokemon... Recover the Manaphy Egg! - This one was my least favorite since it was even more boring than the Shaymin search. Mimi from Vien Town is missing one of her Happiny, so you and Luana agree to look for it. Sometime after that nonsense you see a Manaphy egg washed up on the shore nearby, and Happiny grabs it and you go looking for it once again. Finally you capture the little bastard, get the egg, mission clear. Rescue the Kidnapped Riolu! - This one was... eh. Some kid called Kyle is friends with this Riolu that knows Aura Sphere and some Team Dim Sun goons catch wind of it and kidnap it. So you and Kyle head out to the Oil Field Hideout to save Riolu. Nothing that interesting plot wise, but at least it wasn't brain numbingly easy? Still, eh. Liberate the Tower! - This one made up for the first two extra missions being lame, for sure. Out of all the download missions it's definitely my favorite. The remnants of Team Dim Sun are messing around at Altru Tower and trying to take the Shadow Crystal again. So you and Keith check it out, and surprisingly Darkrai joins you. I was expecting a second fight with it, but nope. This led to a hilarious scene where you get to use Darkrai's field move, Dark Void, and send all the Team Dum Sun goons flying into the faraway Nabiki Beach. And that's all of em. I'm actually considering recording videos of each download mission and putting em on Youtube, since I couldn't find any good ones from the English version. Will be sure to post about it if I do of course. Anyways, even after all of that I still wasn't finished with this game. I had to go and save the worst part for last. What's that you ask?  The dreaded Capture Arena. It was all the Pokemon I ever hated capturing, all in one place, with their movement sped up to make it even more annoying than I could ever imagine. Why did they do this?! WHY?! And more importantly why did I bother completing it!? I really should have done it before the download missions so I'd at least end the game on a better note. D: Despite not wanting to continue, I kept at it and finished all the rooms and the boss without losing once. At the end you get a cut-scene with everyone congratulating you. And so it's over, and I'm left with this empty feeling. I'm even considering getting the first Pokemon Ranger game, despite the fact that capturing looks like even more of a pain there. Curse all those little references to the Fiore region, making me want to check it out. XD  Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia at Play-Asia.com I don't even know who to recommend this game to, but by golly I'll abuse these affiliate links! It's like, Pokemon fans might enjoy the story and characters but be disappointed by the battle system like I was. Meanwhile people who don't know a thing about Pokemon will probably just feel that it's a bad or mediocre game due to the battles which range from boring to annoying. Regardless of the bumps in the road, I feel like I got my $20 worth, but for now I'm sticking with Pokemon Platinum to enjoy some good old turn-based game play. Till next time! |
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