Havoc8154
A big second here for Infinite Fusion! I just found out about it a couple weeks ago and I’ve been absolutely loving it. It’s certainly the classic Red/Blue storyline, but with just enough changes to the maps/story to feel fresh and interesting. The fusions are so much fun, especially the community created art. I wound up finishing my first run with an entire team of Monster Hunter themed Pokemon. Now I’m trying out the randomizer mode and it’s such a blast. Despite browsing the discord for a while and seeing dozens of Hall of Fame teams I’m still finding fresh fusions constantly, it’s really amazing.
Coromon is another one that’s worth a shot. Much better story and world than Nexomon, only occasional 2v2 battles, and some of the best monster designs outside old school Pokemon IMO. It’s not a big a diversion from Pokemon as Cassette Beasts is, which could be good or bad depending on what your looking for.
I agree with you 100%, I truly miss that sense of adventure and exploration gained from stumbling through a world and discovering things as they appear.
I’m definitely gonna sound like an old fart here, but it’s a symptom of the games and technology of today. The mindset TPC has when creating games is that they need to hold kids attention and that if they get stuck, they’ll just move on to some other game/video/whatever and drop Pokemon. Sadly I think they know their audience to an extent. I mean when I first played Blue it was literally the only game I had. When I got stuck in rock tunnel, all I could do was keep trying, and maybe get a peek at a strategy guide if i could get a parent to take me to a bookstore.
Now on switch they’re competing against a massive library of free games specifically tailed to get children addicted, and thousands of cheap options and single digit prices sales. It’s so easy for a kid to hit a wall and just drop it for the next shiny thing.
That said, if they want to keep their adult audience, they could really easily give an option to skip the tutorials, and maybe even an option for more complex dungeons (though that would require TPC to put in real effort, and we see how that’s gone so far). Sadly I don’t think we’ll see Pokemon return to that age of wold exploration, but hopefully the fan game community continues to thrive and pick up the slack in that area.
After that 45 minute breakdown I’m very excited for No Man’s Skyrim. I can definitely understand the hesitation, it’s almost definitely gonna be riddled with bugs on release, but I’ve got gamepass, so I’ll happily beta test for y’all!