I didn't think it was a translation issue to begin with, since the english release was claimed to be "official", but the thought did lurk in the back of my head. Hearing this is really interesting.
As an Italian, I can tell that the Italian community is pretty "proud" of Xenoverse (probably because there aren't good Italian fangames/hack roms besides Xenoverse and Odyssey) and I think it's good (Team Dimension theme inspired by around the world by Daft Punk is amazing) but not perfect. In particular I really disliked the outdated Gen 5 battle mechanics, where electric types can be paralyzed and so on. The best fangame? Definitely no. One of the best? Probably. Definitely a really good fangame
That's something I didn't take into account, I know the English and Spanish speaking communities have a plethora of fangame options, but I never considered that the Italian scene might be lacking. But I'm still glad that despite the options you guys have, you still have some good ones.
@@ayrei1503 Well it's not so surprising, we don't have as many Italian-speaking countries as English or Spanish. It's not a big deal, I speak and understand English and Spanish is really easy to understand for an Italian (plus Spanish best fangames have an English translation anyway) so I'm fine anyway lol, but it's still good to be able to play in your first language
@@ayrei1503 Severely lacking Drap conspiracy is the only good hack rom that I know of. While we do have a NDS rom hacker being a head in the nds rom hacking scene. For fangames and rom hacking we... Got only those two. I'm not going to count the shitty comedy rom hacks that appeal to the small brained people. So yeah we don't have much going on when most of everyone lack talent and those who are talented are focused on the international scene rather then the local.
I liked it the first time I played it but mannnnn are the flaws a lot more obvious on a second playthrough. I also want to mention the fact that the region does not feel particularly cohesive at all, rather just kinda slapped together like an unsolved Rubik's cube.
Exactly. Just like the characters, really. Like we meet our rival like once and they're our personal simp now. Which is double weird since, if you pick the female Protagonist, your simp is like a 1 to 1 copy of your dad. I was genuinely waiting for a twist that we are actually related because only the male Protagonist actually looks related to the Protags parents. Female MC looks adopted. And I'm not even gonna go any deeper into the Silver slander and the absolute trashfire that was "Okay yeah you basically went to buy milk for a decade, abandoned your child and then had an android child sla^e basically, and your cronies attempted to unalive people left and right, but we will forgive you and you'll face zero consequences whatsoever and we are all gonna act like everything is just happy normal family business"
@@toolatetothestory I didn't even really think about the Silver part, but you're right, if ANYONE should know not to abandon his kid to go achieve delusions of grandeur with a massive group, it's the guy who literally had it done to him. and yet he does it anyway with zero repercussions, whether it be legal or familial
Definitely agree about the overworld feeling lacking. All in all i really enjoyed the game tho, great new mons and I really enjoyed the ending of the story
I agree with pretty much everything you said about this game. The splash arts, Pokemon designs, and animated sprites are about the only thing I really felt were worth playing this game for, but other than that, it felt kind of empty. In addition to all that, I don't like the developers on a bit more of a personal level, because if you didn't know, the developers created a mobile game. It was pretty crap, wasn't anything special, but they used the designs of Fakemon from Xenoverse, designs that were made by the artist group Elite_4. And when they tried to ask for compensation for the use of their designs in the monetized mobile game, the devs basically snuffed them, and broke off their partnership from then on. That's why past a certain point in the DLC for Xenoverse, every new Fakemon was just kind of a shitty recolor of existing Pokemon.
The best? I don't know, and yeah, maybe there are some flaws, but I really gotta say Xenoverse is one of my favourites. The Fakemon are all amazing and the story (again, despite its flaws) definitelly got poured a lot of love and effort. For its time (when fangames weren't exactly in the point they are today) I believe Xenoverse Standed very well. A solid 8/10. But hey man, great vídeo BTW. Ps: Do Unbound Next!
I'm glad that despite having somewhat different opinions that you still enjoyed the video. And Unbound will be next, it lost the vote to xenoverse but I still want to review it!
Some of my problems with Xenoverse 1. The new Pokémon feel overshadowed a bit. Outside of the X forms, the first three gym leaders don't use ANY of the new species. Nuphar (Gym 4), was like that too, but her team was updated to include Birigiri and Honchen instead of Brionne and Corsola. It's even not that good later in the game. Why doesn't Wallace Daddy (Sound-type gym leader) use Bandeon, which is basically the flagship Sound-type? When I first played, I also didn't like many of the new Pokemon, so I ended up with only a team of 5 by the end (Shulong, Harrowk, Mylomute, Scovile, and Nebyura). 2. Unbalanced level curve. If you play on classic mode (no full team Exp.Share), then you'll likely end up underleveled, whereas with modern mode (full team Exp.Share that can't be turned off) you'll probably be overleveled. 3. Move animations (though it's more of a problem with Elite Battle System than Xenoverse itself; EBDX has a custom move animation script though) 4. Difficulty. The Cardinals (the game's version of the E4) use less held items then the previous gym leaders. 5. Many of the X forms and new mons being later than they should be based on their evo levels. For example, both Chickaboo and Scaracno, which are some of few new three-stage species in the game (the other main story ones are Sparkowl, Beefle, and Dusmee), aren't obtainable until after Gym 4, and by the time you can catch them, the game's level curve expects the player to have them in their middle stages, as they evolve at levels 29 and 30 respectively (whereas by the time you find them your mons are pushing Level 40, especially on modern mode). Additionally, you can find the middle stages at the same time as the first stages (albeit they're a bit rarer), so you just completely skip the first stages if you'd like. 6. X forms having a 1% encounter rate for the most part, though some have a 5% rate 7. Wild mons being too low leveled Fortunately, an enhanced version of Xenoverse is in the works. It's called Xenoverse: Ordem Et Chaos, and it'll have additional fakemon, a better level curve, a slightly altered story, be on Essentials v21.1, and more.
I feel like the term "best fan game" are often thrown at game with diversity and/or effort. Its quite easy to see that there was a lot of efforts in the making of Xenoverse and the regional form/fake mons introduce diversity which checks out both boxes. By no means Xenoverse is a bad game,its quite good,just that it happens to tick off boxes that makes ppl praise games but cant be the different between a good and a great game
Great review, I agree to most if not all of the points here, I think my main complain of Xenoverse (especially story wise) is near the end of the game, but this video really showed off some of the issues i've also had on my own playthrough of the game.
I personally dropped it pretty early because the random npcs had nothing to say and it felt empty exploring towns, I know most people don't read them but I value the world building they can add (or the jokes they can spout randomly). Still watched a RU-vidr play through the main story and I wasn't really impressed while he thought talking Dragon Gengar and the twist about the parents were genius and it made the story great. It seems to me that some (a lot of ?) people care more about shock value than good writing.
I remember when everyone was praising this game to high heaven. But when I played Xenoverse, I hated the lag issues on my computer and how difficult it was to grind against wild pokemon... I wanted to make my own video on it, but admittedly I was afraid I'd get backlash for dissing such a beloved fangame. Glad Ayrei took the plunge here!
@@DrawciaGleam02 just use modern mode and if your getting over leveled catch some more pokemon to switch in and out with did this and really made the game much more fun
No way I just downloaded your game and out of nowhere i got this video from you in my feed, i didn't even know u have a youtube channel , just saw your discord dp
Since you asked for games to review… could you go more in-depth about what makes Full Moon bad? I haven't played it since high school, and I remember people saying it was good. Thanks in advance, and love Vanguard!
There's not too much to say about it. Other than the fact that the game is really poorly written (very cringy romance) and balanced, the devs also took a lot of stuff they weren't supposed to from reborn and I believe Rejuvenation.
@@ayrei1503 I absolutely agree. It's an enjoyable game and the story is okay, but I can't stand that cringy teen romance dialogues. Plus it's pretty bugged. Not a bad game imho, but definitely far from top 10
@@ayrei1503 Well, first, thanks for the reply. Second, they aren't from/apart of the Reborn forum? That sucks to know. But I do agree wholeheartedly with the cringy romance. I thought I was playing a high school romance drama with that game. The side game made me honestly not care for the characters, and I stopped playing both cold.
Great vid I agree that a lot of characters leave a lot to be desired, honestly the entire segment of the game with GEIST, felt so slow and unneeded because GEIST are so unimportant to the overall plot I will also say, while you don’t cover the post game / dlc made for Xenoverse I will say the dlc battles are very tedious and unfun as the most efficient strategy for almost all of them is just Toxic Stall in addition to revive spam
Official quality in terms of visuals and audio; but ngl, I don't like most of the new Pokemon. A lot of them are kinda ugly, their artwork is great! But the designs are ehhhh. The pseudo is a snake who sheds until its gorgeous, great concept; but it looks terrible! The sumo beetle feels like a worse version of Heracross. There's a literal pile of rocks??? Plus Xenoverse has a rather limited supply of brand new Pokemon, which makes it very hard to replay the game. For example, ground is a very important type, and your first NEW ground type is unobtainable until halfway through the game. Don't like that one? The next is after the 7th gym. Still no? Well that's it till postgame! There's also the X forms which are all very tricky to obtain and ironically are usually worse than the original Pokemon, plus like half are locked to postgame. And there's new Mega Evolutions! But you don't get access to Mega Evolution until after the campaign, so why bother. Plus while it's cool they updated the game for so long after the initial release... I am sick of vintage Pokemon. There's more goddamn vintage Pokemon in this game than new Pokemon. This is on top of the story going downhill in the latter half, pokemon nests being annoying as hell, honestly a lot of problems with this game. Gorgeously rendered but WAY overhyped.
Would love to see more honest reviews on your channel along side your other content. Definitely fills a niche i didnt know i wanted lol. Keep up the good work!
Great review! I actually enjoyed the game thoroughly and wasn't too bothered by what we'll call the "negative" views. I do agree with what you're saying and definitely understand why you felt this way in the game.
Finally someone has the same thoughts on the story as I do, not bad per se but way too much screentime for how simple it ended up being. Honestly I wish more people practiced efficient writing, I would have enjoyed the story a lot more if it was say, half of the runtime it ended up being.
One of the many things I love about xenoverse is its music. You don’t really talk about it. In most other fan games, the music is from official Pokémon games. How would you rate the music in Pokémon xenoverse
I didn't say anything about the music because I didn't really have anything to say. It felt kind of average, and I had a very hard time picking tracks for the video because of it. Don't get me wrong, a custom OST for a fangame is really cool, it just didn't stand out to me
I think Xenoverse is extremly overhyped. The grafics and the effort the developers put in there are very outstanding but I think thats it. The Story is okay, better than most of the main game stories. I personally dont like most of the new fakemon and I remembered when I was at the fourth Gym, looked at my team and thought "Bro, most of my team is garbage", although I had a team of 6 and only played with the new pokemon and I tried to catch every cool or strong pokemon but there werent many options. To be fair there are also a few pokemon whose are very very cool (for example the Gummybear), but I dont like most of them. I hate those additional Health bars, they are soooo annoying, ESPECIALLY in the post Game omfg, but in the main game final against the big ball too, they dont make the fights more difficult, just more annoying. Concluding I would also give this game a 7/10, but I have to say this game got carried by its grafics I'm convinced that with worse grafics this game would never get this hyped as it gets now.
Can you please try out Pokémon pathways since it just released ver 9.0 with lots of new mechanics and storylines Also I kinda like this Pokémon fanbase, really helpful and funny
Honestly this matches my own experience with Xenoverse pretty dang well~ One thing to add to the gushing over the visuals though is that the game has a fully animated anime opening which um. Not gonna lie, I was not expecting that and it definitely got me hyped for the game itself. ...Hype which kinda died a bit due to the writing and the all over the place difficulty but while I definitely wouldn't call it the *best* fangame out there (Rejuvenation, Ashen Frost and Desolation are all more my speed in a multitude of ways), it's definitely a rather good one -outside of the writing- and I'm glad it exists. ...And one day I might even get around to finishing it XD (Note to self: also gotta finish Realidea System. I tend to get it mixed up with Xenoverse in my head for some reason - I think maybe because I learned about them at roughly the same time and they both have similar art things going on? But I was so much more invested in that one until I hit a 'caps lock sensitive puzzle who's hints apparently missed out on being translated' and stalled hard. Miss my pied piper fire rat badly though)
Yeah they game had a really strong start with the animated opening. What I feel happened is that people of very different talent levels worked on the game, leaving it to end up the way it is. Which at the end of the day isn't unexpected, it is a free to play fangame, but it's still worth mentioning.
@@deckardshaw6696 It is! The fakemon starters in particular were really cleverly designed (I'd say fakemon in general but the inability for a number of the gatcha reference mons to learn moves/be anything other than a reference is a bit of a let down), the whole 'points to earn and use' thing is great, LOVED the little alien helper, and... Yeah. Good game, just. Got very very stuck (there's probably info in english about the password out now but been so long since I've played the game might take me a while to get back into it alas)
@@FaisLittleWhiteRaven Unfortunately I played it a long time ago and I don't remember much of the game, but the memes about Charizard and Kanto mons and about bins were hilarious
I find it pretty good but from a gameplay perspective, it wasn't that interesting., The best thing about it is the visuals for the fakemon, but before a later update, almost every pokemon had questionable stats that made them not fun to use. I did a nuzloke, so the AI being so stupid really didn't help. You should play Floral Tempus EX. One of my favorites when it comes to region design, graphics, and story.
Xenoverse's story clicks a little more near the end, but I agree that it isn't Empire or Rejuvenation or w/e other game you hold to a higher standard of storytelling. As someone who is working with a small team on our own fangame....I can honestly say that writing good dialogue isn't especially difficult if you truly love and understand your setting, so that tells me it wasn't that high a priority with Xenoverse's team for whatever reason.
I think decent game graphics good but bad storyline and game is too easy in my opinion. It is not that challenging some time it feels too lagging and lot of bug and you can predict patty much who is the main villain overall it is decent I can give it soild 7/10 graphics is good but the game is not stable
This game is a classic ,along side with pokemon unbound, yeah the game aged a little but hey its fun tho, can you talk about pokemon smash it's coming really soon 😉
Personally speaking, I liked it. It was pretty good. It was reasonably fun, but it's not at the tier where I would actively play through it multiple times over. Story was pretty good, although pretty predictable, and so was the battling, and I liked the new designs reasonably well. But again, I don't find it to be the best fan game there is. You mentioned you wanted to do an Unbound review next, but I want to recommend Pokemon Tectonic, which you should already know about. Their battle system is absolutely carrying that game.
@@ryanwall1470 ok then for completed ones >>>Pokemon- Empyrean Opalo Africanavs Hidden place Soulstone 2 Empire Clover Dark realm Edge rising X digimom chronicles And for incompleted ones >>>Pokemon- abyss Z (Maybe I am forgetting more but if u have played some of them then I can give you my personal favs from these)
@@Hey_i_am_A-D As someone who has played and enjoyed both, saying vanguard is actually laughable. It takes the edginess factor and goes x10,000 with it compared to Xenoverse.
I loved Xenoverse it felt like its own thing to me. It was very easy but I'll take that over level caps and over difficult games as thats not why I play Pokemon. I prefer the vanilla experience. Unbound to me is the masterpiece and Xenoverse was my favorite fan game for awhile but has now been eclipsed by Reminiscencia which was just as good as story writing could get for a fan game.
I'm italian and the community is proud of Xenoverse being it one of the few italian pokemon fangames/hack roms. I found the game quite fun but i really didn't like the main story, expecially in the second half. Also it's not enough of a challenge for my taste. I'm more of a drayano style hack roms player so i don't have a lot of experience with fan games. Maybe this game's story is perceived good because the average is even worse? Please recommend me something interesting, fun and not cringe if it exists 🙏
I finished Pass 5 yesterday, totaling 81 hours, and I gotta say, I have no idea what's topping xenoverse if there is such a thing. Some people say it's too easy, but for me, I played classic mode and didn't grind and the game was pretty challenging, and the Furious Battles DLC added a lot of fights I actually needed to strategize for. One of the things Xenoverse does pretty well (pre-final battle) is that it feels like a real pokemon game. It's not too edgy, but it's story does something new for pokemon (new in terms of set up, not in terms of evil team, gym leader, etc), and it's overall pretty good. The twist that your father was silver is definitely something that would not show up in a real game, but everything pre final battle felt like a real pokemon game. The only bad bit of the game for me personally is the section from the end of Mt Starburst (after the Alter fight), to the train incident after Westar city. That section of the game was so boring and the knock-off ghost busters quest was really bad and boring and I just wanted it to be over. Other than that, nothing stands out as bad for me. It is the only pokemon fan game I have completed as of now, but I dont see what would be better than it.
Xenoverse is the best imo The story is great and i prefer story over gameplay. Also it feels" gamefreaky" because that was the point. Prefer it way more then whatever rejuvenation was supposed to be
Idk , the story is good until you think about it more than 5 seconds then it completely falls apart. Especially the whole Versil ordeal just sucks with how it butchers Silver's character in the manga.
@@dootrevenant7203 yeah im starting to think that i was a bit to generous with my review and score. The writing is such a mess while somehow still being bland
@@ayrei1503 the postgame fixes the bland part a bit...but it becomes a thousand times messier (in no thanks to the former lead artist breaking up from the team) The reason why the Ordem et Caos (the Xenoverse remake project that you are aware of since you are in our discord server) exists is because our lead liked Xenoverse and what it was going for , but felt the writing was very underwhelming , so it just started as a story rewrite that quickly became a new game to fix the mistakes of the original
This was going to be my next play after finishing Reborn. After watching this video and taking into consideration of everything that was said, my willingness to give it a chance slowly deteriorated. However, when I saw this fan game had a regional variant of Pikachu...the MAIN. MASCOT. of Pokemon....that's when I said "NOPE!" There are things you can change, but don't change Pikachu. You can give it some regional differences, like adding another type, but don't deviate so far from the original design that you alienate fans. Even the regional Electabuzz line was a bit...out there for me. If it's not electric anymore, shouldn't it just be named something else at that point? Just my two cents.
Aren't those X forms tho? Which are multi dimensional varients of Pokemon Also we have official pokemon like Alolan Sandshrew which is about ice and igloos and not sand , and also this game was released around SwSh
I don't know man, criticising a game for the story while praising reborn is a bit weird lol. Reborn had some god damn atrocious writing last I checked. I guess we just have a different tastes. In my opinion reborn and rejuvenation are both poorly written, but anyone can get past bad writing if they vibe with the story and you clearly didn't with Xenoverse. All that aside, 7/10 for this game is absolutely ridiculous. There was a lot of effort put into it, far more than any fan game released at the time. The graphics are far superior to others released at the time, it has creative pokemon designs (reborn/rejuv don't have any), and debuted pokeSDK, which runs far smoother than essentials. It's ok to dislike things about the game, but giving this game a 7 is absolutely unfair, and you seem clearly biased by your dislike of the story and your high expectations. 4/10 for your video, good presentation, unfair analysis.
I didn't criticize the game purely off the story. I think reborn, and especially Rejuvenation, are well written, and they have much more attention to detail with their characters and world. This is an opinionated review, and you don't need to agree with me. I think a 7/10 is way above fair, as it means I enjoyed 70% of the game. And yes, I did have high expectations for the game because everywhere I look about xenoverse is people praising it very highly
@@ayrei1503I don't think I'd call Reborn well written, though I guess it depends on what aspect of the story you're talking about. I found the character writing to be really grating and obnoxious in Reborn, while Rejuvenation's character writing has generally been pretty enjoyable. Enjoyment's subjective though, so whatever. Sorry, getting sidetracked. This was a great video, and I think I be interested in seeing a review on Pokemon Reborn (though I get that might be easier said than done, considering the size of the game.) Looking forward to future videos!
no hold up before you make the video was it that good YES because using the same cutesy sprites 3077 times in a row IS LAME AND UNORIGINAL pokemon SHOULD go edgy rightfully so as im tired of the cute themes it lacks color lacks good gaming im tired of it sick of it even i cannot bare to see these generations if its not pumping darker pokemons out its like saying f****ing fluttershy of all things from my little f****ing pony is dark mode pokemons like you what bro?!! im sorry did i hear you correctly? 0/10
