Well I've finally managed to pull myself away from the expansive, dragon-killing, time-devouring abyss that is the Elder Scrolls V. This is partially due to the constant glitches and bugs that plagues that game, repeatedly screwing me over at every opportunity. Like that boss who refuses to give you that promotion you've been working your ass off and instead give it to his idiot friend who only got the job because they were both on the football team in high school. Naturally my frustration has reached the point where I'm likely to go berserk and bite the head of a small animal at the slightest annoyance, making it the perfect time to do a review.

I was originally planning on reviewing Phantasia 4, but this game caught my attention for one simple reason. I like Pokémon. Yes I'm proud to admit it, I like Pokémon. I've been playing since Blue version and you know what? I still like the games, even if very little of it does make sense and 10 year olds are sent out into the wilderness alone to enslave biological weapons of mass destruction because everyone over 30 is either evil or insane.

So yes, I will be reviewing Pokémon Trinity by TheRexion, and since there is no criticism harsher than fan criticism, I hope TheRexion has an extra large box of tissues with him today.

One last thing, you may have noticed, but from now on I'll be officially referring to all my future reviews as "Master of Mayhem VS", because if these games want a good score from me they're going to have to fight for it!


Story:
The game starts out like any Pokémon game would, but rather than being introduced to the world by eccentric professor, as is Pokémon tradition, you are instead greeted by a rude, obnoxious, forth wall-breaking Mew, seemingly berating you for playing the game in first place, you wake up and take on the role as... "you".

Ok I’m going to stop right here for a moment. Pokémon games by their nature encourage the player to envision themselves as the hero or heroine of their own story, so you’re not pigeonholed when building your team of your favourite super monsters. This works because the protagonist is a voiceless human husk with the personality of a slab of cement whose only action is to nod in agreement as strolls merrily from place to place, thus allowing the player to easily place themselves in the protagonist’s shoes.

In Trinity, however, not only does the character speak, he has a discernible personality and, most damning of all, a back-story. I'm not playing as "me" I'm playing as some angst ridden, pre-teen with parental issues!

The kicker; despite being able to name the character very early on, which normally would have helped to alleviate the problem, the game still refers to the character as "you" whenever the protagonist speaks. It's like the game is forcing you to be this person, which is something I personally find insulting. 'But mayhem,' the crowd responds, 'doesn't every RPG force you to take on the "role' as someone else?' Yes, crowd that suddenly showed up out of nowhere, but as a casual observer from on high with some power over their actions. You help shape their destiny, but it's still there destiny.

There is a very simple solution to this problem though that would have ensured that I wouldn’t be whining about this in the first place. Give the character a name, any name! Sapphire, Brendan, the Duke of Hazard anything! The protagonist here deserves that much.

Wow, sorry about that. Now where was I? Oh right the story.

Awakening at your desk from a teen angst coma, our hero (who I will now be referring to as Blue) remembers that his homework on Obscure Pokémon Mythology is due tomorrow and he fell asleep studying. Thus, begins a frantic cram session where Blue reads a legend about an evil Demon-Pokémon (whose name coincidentally faded or left blank) that was released from... a crystal or something, and went on a destructive evil rampage before his counterpart Arceus, kicked his evil demonic rear end back to Red version and... re-seals him inside another crystal.

Mentally drained by reading a whole six pages, our Hero decides to go out for some air, until remembers his house is smack in the middle of nowhere surrounded buy angry wild Pokémon and no way to protect himself. Then, goes outside anyway... Fortunately, rather than being mulled by a Mightyena, Blue conveniently stumbles upon a Bulbasaur/Charmander/Squirtle (you get to pick which one) which he manages to catch with an Ultra Ball that he just happens to have "borrowed" from professor Oak (which makes you wonder why was so worried about going outside).

Turns out to have been a waste though since you run into May soon after, who's come all the way to your house in Pokémon Mordor, to give you a Pokémon to protect from every blood crazed critter that apparently lurks in every stretch of tall grass! Of course once she sees that you already have a Pokémon she decides to keep the thing for herself, despite already being an established trainer. No May, you keep that Squirtle, I don't need a second Pokémon, it's not like this place is crawling with thing that want to eat me or anything. Or that I could use a backup in case this one I have now bites it. I'm sure it will get along with the other 70 bajillion water types you have. Oh and then she challenges Blue to unavoidable battle with his new mon (and remember she’s an experienced trainer here even if she is using the Pokémon she was supposed to give you) that the game honestly expects you to win! Because you get a game over if you don’t!

Once you do beat her she congratulates you, everything is all sunshine and roses, then May casually mentions that the town she's from is in great peril because some grope called Team Neon has chased everyone out of town, except for May and some chick called Professor Rina, looking for something and that we should hurry and do something about it. Damn it May! Isn't that the sort of thing you should have told me earlier? Like before you forced me to fight you and my Charmander was at full HP?

Using her mystical powers of the plot May teleports everyone to Twilight Town (no not the Kingdom Harts one) to talk to Professor Rina who explains that that some grope called Team Neon has chased everyone out of town looking for something. In other words, things you already know.

Blue is then kicked out without any explanation on what to do and with only the very, very vague hint of "I must have missed something". So I spent the next 20 minutes running around pressing the action key on every tile hoping to find something because you can't leave the town or go into any buildings, apart from Rina's, and you have noidea what you're doing. I very nearly quit the game there until I found a small opening in the tress to the west that I only stumbled upon by accident and is very, very easy to miss otherwise.

Anyway, exploring the grotto Blue finds a Mew, who tries to talk to you when two members of Team Neon approach you demanding you hand over Mew or else. Mew teleports away, Team Neon get angry and fight you, you beat the crap out of them, they swear vengeance against Blue and leave you to return to Twilight Town where you discover that Professor Rina has been kidnapped by Team Neon for some nefarious purpose and Blue and May are the only ones that can stop them because you're really the only two who know about it. They quickly deduce, however, that they're in no shape to take on a whole criminal organisation and decide the best way to get stronger is by challenging all the regions Gyms.

Ok so the story is not Shakespeare, but it's miles above the standard Pokémon fare. It's great that there is an actual reason to undertake the league challenge; it beats the usual "Hay 10 year old child! Here is a Pokémon, now become champion!"

There are some gripes, but it’s less about the story and more about the way the story is presented. For some reason, the developer has a crippling fear of using the whole dialog box, like he/she is afraid that too much text on the screen at once will cause our eyeballs to explode, which results in the text being rather disjointed and really hampers the flow of the reading.

The other thing that annoys me is that the big, bad, evil Pokémon's name is never mentioned, and even if it is it's always with "...". I can see why the developer did it, there're trying not to ruin the surprise of who or what Evilus (my name for it at this point) really is. But you do know villains can lie right? They don't have to come out in their first meeting and go "I am Evilus, bringer of destruction and doom, FEAR ME!" They can pretend to be someone else, either an ally or enemy and when the time is right go "Fool! I was really Evilus this entire time! You have played right into my hands!" Or maybe perhaps "Little did you know, but Evilus is another name given to me, Mewtwo!" Or something like that. It just seems lazy otherwise.


Sound/Graphics/Mapping (yes they’re all together now):
Most if not all the graphics have either been taken from the GBA Pokémon games or are modified versions of such. So it looks very authentic at least, which in a fan game like this a good thing. Too bad the mapping doesn't live up to those standards. The towns are fine (by Pokémon standards), but most of the routs are just narrow winding one-way pathways seemingly designed to make you fight as many random encounters possible. This applies to buildings as well, buildings that contain an inexplicable amount of cardboard boxes that corral the player into single long path. Except there are no random encounters here, which means the only purpose of these is to increase play time and be annoying.

There are soundtracks from the Pokémon games to of course, but there is also a host of tracks from other sources. Most of these where good though and appropriate for the location and makes it feel that this is more than another Pokémon hack.

One other thing to note is that your Pokémon of choice follows you around like in HeartGold/SoulSilver, which is cool, except for the severe path-finding issues. Often your Pokémon will get stuck on a corner or sometimes when entering a map the Pokémon will randomly travel across the screen from the side or something. It never really disrupts the game, but it can get distracting. It's perhaps at its most irritating when jumping down ledges and your follower will magically jump in front of you. Fortunately you can just press a button to swap places with your Poke-pal, but it's still annoying.


Gameplay:
I was going to write something funny to introduce the gameplay here, but I couldn’t think of anything. It might have something to do with the fact that the gameplay is as rough and uncomfortable as having a back massage with a belt sander, something you will probably notice within the first few moments.

When I initially started the game I picked Bulbasaur as my starter because Ivysaur is my most favourite Pokémon ever, but when I had to fight May, in that unavoidable battle, she promptly handed my ass to me... four times! So I restarted the game, picked Charmander and got my delicious revenge. Why? Because the battle system is horribly broken and heavily favours Mons with sky high speed and attack power or absolute tanks with no little room in between. That battle againstt May prevented me from using one of my favourite Pokémon, which irks me to no end. This is yet another example of a small thing making a big difference; if the game simply cut to a scene where May makes fun of you for losing, rather than a game over, I wouldn't have been so pissed about it. And don't say you can't do it either TheRexion, because you don't score a game over when you lose anywhere else!

You will probably also notice that you can't catch any Pokémon. Instead they are either found or given to you at periodic intervals, usually after a Gym battle or other event. Honestly I don't mind this. A caching mechanic would be really hard to implement and this is a good way of handling it, it worked for Pokémon Colosseum after all.

There are some other things you'll notice as well, most of which have been brought about by the imitations of using RPG2K3. First Pokémon only have four stats; (apart from the obvious HP/PP) Attack, Defence, Speed and Special Attack. This is of course due to the limitations of the program, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, I'm just wondering why the developer didn't just call Special Attack "Special", like the old Red and Blue versions. It's the sort of thing that only a fan of the series would be bothered by, but considering the game is aimed towards fans I don't understand why he/she didn't do it.

Secondly; Pokémon use equipment. Of course rather than weapons and armour it's more along the lines of Held item, Plate, Scarf, Berry... It's an interesting concept. Unfortunately I never got far enough into the game for this to make a huge impact.
Thirdly; Attacks function more like spells in traditional RPGs. It's somehow works though, as most Pokémon have plenty of PP to spend and gives you many more attacks than normal. At least I think you're supposed to have more moves, it didn't feel like it. Charmander was at level 6 when I took on the first Gym leader, but he still only had Struggle and Scratch, by all rights he should have learnedGrowl and Ember by then. And don't think it was easy to get to level 6 either. Most encounters give almost no experience and you need tones of EXP to level up. Pokémon are grindy games I know, but this is just absurd.

Come to think of it, why is Struggle even there? In the originals it's a last-ditch effort move in case you run out of PP, but here it's completely redundant because the Attack Command exists. Which does exactly the same thing, only it does more damage and higher Crit Ratio!

Lastly, and this is a big one, you can only have one Pokémon in your party at a time. That for me was the deal breaker. Yes I know the game's using the default battle system and only having one Pokémon is a way of getting around that. It doesn't mean it's not a terrible decision. There has to be a way to program the system to allow you to bring along multiple Pokémon and still only use one in battle at a time, there just has to. Even if it's only four, I'll take it because frankly if I'm forced to only use one mon it doesn't matter what other Pokémon you're given, I might as well just play though the game as my starter (or maybe your favourite Eevee evolution) and nothing else (and heaven forbid you need a HM slave). At least you'll be able to avoid using the Box system, which is as buggy and unintuitive as an upside-down honey farm. No joke, it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get the thing to work and another 15 to get out of it.


Final Verdict:
When I started this review I was not just on a quest for ratings, but a quest for truth. I journeyed across the mountains of peril, travelled back to the age of the dinosaurs, I rode the moon worm, slew the Balrog and escaped the Matrix and I learnt the Truth. And the truth is...

The truth is Pokémon Trinity is actually a good game, but its good game that’s plagued by so many bugs and horrible, horrible design choices they completely eclipse all the positive aspects.

I really could have liked this game. The story was definitely more involving than most Pokémon games, the protagonist had an actual past, and I would have liked to see how the default battle system would have worked out in a Pokémon game.

One by one, however, another negative aspect came along until all the fun was sucked out of the game and I simply stopped playing, and I know that no game is without flaws, but flaws here are so big and so numerous they can't be ignored. Like how the maps are mostly windy passages that serve only to annoy, or the random encounters being surprisingly strong, but offering little reward or the constant bugs, or the fact there was no Pokémon Centre in Twilight Town.

Seriously, there is no Pokémon Centre in Twilight Town! In fact, there's no place to heal at all! So your sole options for recovery at the start of the game is either the very limited healing items you can scrounge together at that point, or to get your ass kicked, which turns out to be the better option as all that happens is that you're teleported back to the town and fully healed. And when dying makes more tactical sense than playing the game normally you know you've screwed up somewhere.

The good news is that these are all very fixable flaws, and if seen to correctly I can see this becoming a really good game. If you can look past the faults a fan of the series might enjoy it, but at the way it is now I honestly can’t recommend this game to anyone, let alone Pokémon fans.

Edit: Score removed since a new demo was released.