Pokémon Hunter 3: The Search for Curly's Gold

Poke’mon and RTP with Final Fantasy cameos? This sounds like a fan game gone horribly wrong. But that’s a somewhat unfair assessment, so let us take a closer look at the Poke’mon Hunter series. Unsurprisingly, you’ll be hunting poke’mon a lot.

Team Awesome, a group of generic RTP heroes, has been hired by a mining crew to protect them while they search a mysterious mountain for rare fossils that will make them all rich. Aided by a mysterious Krabby who is anything but what he seems, the party explores the dark caverns, fighting feral poke’mon who would make the Elite Four wet themselves with terror. But inside the mountain lurks a mysterious force that could ruin all their plans. Are the legends of a ghost protecting a great treasure somewhere in the mountain true?

Balance 2.5/5:

99.9% of the enemies you’ll be fighting are Poke’mon. When fighting Poke’mon you expect certain rules. You expect them to adhere to certain types and to be weak against very specific forms of attacks. Unfortunately, this did not hold true here. Although there are a wide variety of skills to be learned based on a variety of elements, only very, very rarely does the elemental affinity of a weapon or spell make any difference in fighting enemies. Furthermore, the specific elemental types for poke’mon aren’t even entirely present, some have completely different abilities than their name and sprite would suggest.To put it bluntly, it looks like a duck but it doesn’t really quack like a duck. (actually it mews like a cat but let’s not go there.)

So if the enemies only superficially resemble the creatures we are likely to recognize, why bother to use poke’mon in the first place? Why not just use more original or generic monsters? I thought long and hard about this question. The poke’mon could give you some vague clues as to what types of moves it is likely to use or how big of a threat it is, but these aren’t things that aren’t easily discernable by other means. A snake monster is likely to use a poison attack even if it’s not Arbok.

So what do these monsters actually gain by being poke’mon? One thing. In battle, poke’mon will evolve into stronger forms upon occasion. This means that even a fairly standard battle could turn lethal in short order as a pokemon evolves and suddenly becomes a much bigger threat. This means you must stay on your toes at all times.

But enough theoretical stuff, I’m sure you’re all wondering how battles actually play out. Each of your primary party members has a different specialty, such as healing or status cures. This means you’ll need your whole party in fighting shape in order to deal with every possible threat. However, each character can also learn special abilities of specific elements. Status effects work well on both you and the enemy, but as already mentioned, elemental type rarely influences damage to any great degree. Bosses are frequent and challenging, but they often seem to have far more HP than necessary, meaning that it quickly becomes a slashfest as you simply attack and heal as necessary. Some bosses mix it up a bit by having multiple foes, but in general a lot of fights feel like a chore. Also, an unfortunate side effect of my best fighter also being my primary healer meant that I lost much of my offensive capabilities In intense fights. Ultimately I was forced to spend a lot of time grinding to defeat some enemies. However, I won’t rule out that I may have missed a lot of useful abilities that would have made things easier for me, so I won’t be too brutal on this category.

Level Design 3.5/5:

Virtually the entire game takes place within a single mountain, divided up into several distinct “caves” with their own theme, such as a water cave or fire cave. Naturally, the puzzles inside each cave vary depending on which element is present in the cave. The ice cave has ice slider puzzles, and the water cave has a cleverly done raft-riding sequence. The puzzles in each area gradually build upon what you’ve already learned, meaning you are rarely confused. However, a few puzzles operate on fairly arbitrary rules and the high encounter rate can make solving some puzzles very difficult.

For the exploration-minded, this game has a lot to offer. There are many, many hidden items about, and each level has a sub-level of sorts during which you can hint for the titular Curly’s Gold. Overall, the exploration aspect of the mountain is executed very well, often times you will feel like playing a Zelda, Metroid or Castlevania game as a new item, weapon or tool you acquire opens up significant new areas of the game world. However, while some caves yield some sort of tool or hint on how to proceed, some of the caves yield nothing at all when completed, making the player feel like they accomplished a lot of nothing.
Often, however, maps are simply much too large and nebulous and it is very easy to get lost early on before you are familiar with the mountain’s layout. Fortunately, the game provides you with a helpful map early on, which is extremely useful for keeping track of your progress and finding your way out of the mountain when you’re ready to call it a day.

One nice touch is your loyal crew of NPC miners will follow you into each dungeon and, in each room, give you some information about the room you are in and how to proceed. Sometimes this advice is very useful, but sometimes....not so much.


Are you sure?


Characters 3.5/5:

This game will assault your senses almost immediately upon starting it up. You’ll be greeted to your squad of heroes sounding off their various party roles and defining character attributes. Basically, this amounts to three quiet guys and one guy who is loud enough to make up for the three quiet ones. The player’s avatar in the game world is Lilith, the team’s archer, although it may as well have been any of the others for how much this affected the game.

This party will be assisting AVALANCHE from Final Fantasy 7, lead by Barret Wallace himself. These factors, when combined with the fact that my character’s abilities were called “Skillz” and my items were called “wussy heal,” the game was practically daring me to keep playing it. But once you get past this initial premise, the AVALANCHE crew manages to be a group of serviceable, and even likeable group. Them being Final Fantasy cameos is entirely irrelevant so you may as well just pretend that they have these characters’ facesets and no other characteristics.

As for Team Awesome themselves, they are fairly unremarkable, but they have enough party chemistry that their interactions are never boring.

Storyline 3.5/5:

Each day you will have two hours to explore a new dungeon looking for hints as to how you will locate your fossils. If your two hours run out you will have to start the dungeon over, but this time limit was never an issue for me. Sometimes the pacing feels a bit forced as often times you will not be able to advance in the story until you clear a dungeon even if the dungeon reveals itself to hold nothing of value, and occasionally you will be forced to wait a certain number of days before proceeding. Fortunately the game provides some entertaining minigames to play between days to break up the monotony.

Fairly early on in your adventure, your party will split into two teams. One team will continue the quest to find the fossils, exploring a different cave each day looking for clues. Your other party will search for Curly’s Gold in the secret places in the mountain, as a large and extended sidequest. You can switch between these two groups at pre-determined spots. Whether you find the treasure or not influences the ending, giving the game some replay value. There are also occasionally sidequests to break up the monotony of the main quest.

Music and Sound 2/5:

Most of the music is RTP used to not-stunning effect, and the sound effect when enemies die is very inappropriate and annoying. Most other sounds are functional though and the music never got on my nerves.

Overall 3/5:

This game has a lot to offer for exploration fans, or poke'mon fans. The graphics may be RTP but most of the game looks perfectly acceptable despite this fact. It is also worth noting that this game is Rated E for everyone, there is little violence and no vulgarity, even considering Barret Wallace is among the main cast. If you like exploring and puzzleplay, and can stand the grinding and poke’mon stigma you may want to give this game a try.