An oddly fabricated hack considering nothing as far as sound effects, graphics, or game mechanics (including many broken moves... fire spin comes to mind) goes. So rather than rate those, we'll get right into addictiveness, story, depth, and difficulty.


Addictiveness: 4.
The hack tries to give an arcade style feel to pokemon, where a random selection of six "starter" pokemon are at your disposal, among them you choose three, than go on to battle random trainers you would have normally met in the game. (Like fishers, bug catchers, super nerds, etc.) This PvP style gameplay between player and A.I. is probably what a lot of people have been looking for in a pokemon game. Being able to just stat for stat, battle without differing level conditions. And the point is to accumulate as many "wins" as possible to show off with like a highscore.

Depth: 3.
As described in addictiveness, you pick three, than when you defeat an enemy you may switch out one of said three for one of their pokemon. This random fantasy football sort of play style might seem like great fun at first, but you'll quickly find your team build is either grotesquely inefficient, or all powerful. Either way it will bore you unless your interest is specifically in high scores.

Difficulty: 4.
Depending on your build, you could either lose the first round, or never lose. The thing is though it's all so random which does not work well in turn based combat and rock, paper, scissor formats like pokemon. Another cruelty factor is once you lose a battle, you must start from the bottom at zero and earn your way back up to beat your old high score. (Though I suppose you could just save in between battles and than reset if you lose.)

But dirty tricks like auto-saves won't do you any good if the dice gods just aren't in the mood that day. And even if you get an elite team, considering how pokemon battles tend to go with 1001 variables involving status ailments, binding loops like wrap, or all too convenient A.I. critical hits... it's basically playing craps but with a lot more animation and intensity.

Overall: 4.3.
Not a bad idea, but maybe Pokemon just was not the place for it, or at least not before tweaking certain attacks, types for the pokemon, etc. Red/Blue, as is... was already very lopsided as far as elemental advantage and power builds, let alone when you cannot control what you obtain and have no potions to fall back on. Perhaps this would have been better as a player vs player sort of game where two human contestants get their random three pokemon and bout. But even than, that's very dependent on what they "roll". Not a bad premise though. And actually somewhat makes competitive pokemon play make sense.

Jim Profit : Good review, maybe you could make them a little longer, but good job otherwise.

solidx123456 : I disagree, this review was as long as it needed to be. People should realize that most game reviews don't need 1000+ words for them to be good. In fact, I don't think any review needs to be that way, and I personally prefer to read a 500-words review rather than a 1500 words review. You can easily sum up the game and speak your mind about a game in 400 words, and that is exactly what Jim Profit did. He said everything necessary that we needed to know. In just 400+ words, that's more impressive rather than underwhelming, in my books.

Anyway, I'd like to point out that moves like Wrap and Fire Spin actually work like that in the first generation of Pokemon games. It's not broken, just annoying. I liked this review though. Like I said, you said everything I needed to know, and even though it was quite a critical review, I felt inclined to try it out. I actually made my own review for it too... Errr, well anyway, thanks for the review!

OrdannonsX : That's your personal preference, and that's fine, if you like to read shorter reviews, more power to ya, I for one like a long detailed review so I know what I'm getting in to when playing a game and I don't waste my time, it depends on the game on how detailed the review needs to be and how long it is, it also depends on how much time that user has, what type of reviews he likes to write, it depends on much more things, I try to put as much detail and try to cover everything in my reviews cause that's how I like to write them, if someone just wants to give a brief look at the game and just stick with the basics and inform other users on just the basics and that's how that user likes to write his reviews, then fine, it depends on the game and the reviewer. I tried out this game and felt there were a few more things he could have mentioned, but it was still a great review, and you did a really good job Jim Profit.