Pokémon Hunter 4: The Hidden Truth

The 4th game I'm making using rm2k, and also promising to be the last (for that engine, at least). Returning to the location explored in the first game of the series, it hopes to succeed in places where the past episodes failed. Even with the slew of updated methods and ideas, it still plays similarly to its cousins, so here is a list of things you can expect carried over from the others:



But wait! Those are just the things that haven't changed. Here are the things that have!

Remastered Elements: The elements have always been a part of the series, but they never played much of a role in the past, mostly due to bad design choices and poor implementation. But not anymore! Now, elements that strike a weakness do 2 times as much damage, as opposed to 1.5 in the previous games. Resistances cut damage in half, instead of .75. Finally, monsters now have weaknesses and resistances that make sense (and sometimes more than one of each!). Throwing random elemental attacks into your enemies won't work nearly as well as it did. You'll especially want to think twice about how you fight bosses, as they only take one quarter of the damage from an attack they're resistant to! Depending on how you strategize, things could be very easy...or much, much harder.

Remastered Status Problems: As with elements, these have always been present in the series. But now they've been redesigned to make them more useful! Effect rates have increased and vary depending on the type of status problem and the enemy they're being used against. Bosses are no longer immune to them, so use this new vulnerability to your advantage!

Party Options: This episode features a great deal more heroes than the previous ones. Your main hero is Tom, but he's the only human you control. The rest are all the Pokémon he trains. There are six you can choose from, but your party is limited to four, so you can bring three Pokémon with you anywhere you go. You should carefully consider which ones to bring so you can use their elemental abilities to your advantage. But even if you do pick the wrong ones, it's not so bad, because the game also has...

Beast Whistle: Using this item calls Tom's Pokémon to him, allowing you to change your party almost anywhere. This lets you change your party on the fly as new or unexpected threats emerge. You can't use it during battle, though, so you'll have to plan ahead for fights.

Mass Level Up: This behind-the-scenes feature will save you a lot of pointless grinding. Through mass level up, all the playable characters share the same experience (even the ones you aren't using). At the end of each day and night (see below), the amount of experience you gained as each hero is tallied, divided, and distributed to all the characters available for that time period (the heroes are divided between day and night). This way, the levels of the heroes stay similar to each other with no extra effort from the player. Of course, it doesn't work if you don't fight anything.

Day & Night System: This feature is returning from the 3rd episode, but with a few tweaks to it. Each day is now just one hour long, and the midday warning comes between each half hour. Also, the night aspect of the game is more significant. During the day, you play as Tom on his adventure. During the night, you play as Splinter, the Rattata that belongs to Tom's close friend. Splinter and the other Pokémon have their own separate quest that takes place only at night. Night works exactly the same as day; one hour to explore with a midnight warning after half an hour. You alternate between the two storylines as each day and night ends. The events in one story can affect the other to a certain extent, but they both work toward the same goal (though the methods used to reach it are completely different).

Axe Swap: Exploiting weaknesses and avoiding resistances can make fighting much easier, but you never have full access to all of the game's 7 elements at once. This is where the Axe Swap system helps. Through a side trip, you can acquire Swap Books that teach Tom how to add an element to his axe. The skill costs very little to use, and the axe will remain the element it is given throughout the battle (and returns to normal when the battle ends). If you accidentally give it the wrong element, you can change it with a different swap skill. Eventually, Tom can wield any element with his axe at will. You don't get quite that far in this demo, but I hope you can see what this means.

While yet unfinished, I hope the improvements I've made will show and carry this episode further than its predecessors could ever hope to reach. This will be what the others should have been all along! Assuming I ever get around to finishing it, of course.