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 Pokemon Insurgence is yet another Pokemon Essentials-based fangame. Unlike the ones that Orange Fluffy Sheep has done, this one isn't nearly as bad. Don't get me wrong, it's not good by any stretch of the imagination. This game is brutally, unforgivingly hard and it has two stories. One is "dark and mature" and the other "is closer to a normal pokemon story." Both stories go through the same game, so I'm not sure much changes. However, there's something very important to remember. The devs for Insurgence aren't suffering from Absolute Virtue syndrome. So named for the infamous FFXI boss where the developers kept banning players who beat the boss because it wasn't done "correctly". The game is difficult because the devs are under the impression that their playerbase enjoys fighting competitive-viable teams. What makes you qualified to LP a pokemon game? I'm the least qualified person possible. I've played most of the mainline games, but I haven't memorized the type chart. Instead, I keep a website open that does the work for me. Until Gen 6, I made teams with 4 attack moves and no status effects... positive or negative. Don't come here looking for competence. I'm just here to shepherd you all through the lovely story while abusing super effective moves and an unending supply of revives. I have beaten this game before and by god I will do it again. Spoiler Policy? None. At all. Ever. Don't be that guy who comes in after the second update to drop a wall of text containing unmarked spoilers about the final boss and ending. No wink-wink-nudge-nudge spoilers. No "oh wait till you guys see THIS part" stuff. Just be cool and enjoy the parade of terribleness. We'll get to the end come hell or high water. For what it's worth, discussing specific "Delta Pokemon" if I haven't shown them off counts as a spoiler. I'm gonna try to show off as many as I can. The ones I can't, I'll describe. If you don't know what a "Delta Pokemon" is, then I have such sights to show you. Strap in because this crazy train don't stop. Updates As the game progresses, the title screen changes to preview the legendary pokemon we'll be The Cult of Darkrai Telnor Town Shade Forest Telnor Cave  Midna Town Midna Mine Ancient Ruins  Suntouched City Suntouched Gym Suntouched Gym Plot Dump  Metchi Town Vipik City Vipik Gym Vipik Dump  Samsara Cave Rezzai Desert Helios City The Black Market The Jade Tower  Utira Town Utira Library ***THERE BE LOTS OF PUNS*** Miara Town Whirl Islands  Sonata City Sonata Hills Kepler City Abyssal Base  Kepler Gym Kepler Lab Nasca Town  Murk Forest Fiery Caverns Selene City Selene City Gym  The Dragon Ruins The Ancient Tower Oranos Town Satellite Corps  Crystal Cave Amphitrite Gym Perfection Base Mount Rose Infernal Base  The Cult of Darkrai (Revisit)  Prion Town Erebus City  Crystal Cave (return) Void Gauntlet Victory Road Elite Four Championship Postgame The Postgame is divided up by sidequests.  Home of the Timeless  Gaea Town Hiking Boots Roundup  Holon Grasslands Holon Marsh Holon Desert Holon Lake Holon Jungle Holon Mountain Holon Volcano Gaea Core  Samsara Cave  Nightmare Badlands  No Man's Land The Great Namehere  The Outer Core  The Deep Cavern  The Throne of the Hegemon Legendary Wrap-Up Elite Four Rematch The End Memory Editing For Fun and Profit Leonyth has volunteered to go through the game on the non-edgy story mode. These are his findings up through the third gym! Traditional Mode #1 Traditional Mode #2 Traditional Mode #3 Traditional Mode #4 Traditional Mode #5 SirSystemError shows off the Pokemon Insurgence Speedrun The Insurgence Speedrun Route, Part 1 The Insurgence Speedrun Route, Part 2 The Insurgence Speedrun Route, Part 3 Fan Art DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 12:20 on May 30, 2019 |
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Sep 25, 2018 14:23
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 Ten people are pictured here. I sincerely hope none of them ever wind up reading this, because I'm gonna spend quite a lot of time savaging this game.  Please support the official release. We don't have to press any buttons here. The game moves on after a few seconds.  I've beaten this game. I still don't know why Giratina is on the title screen. I can think of close to a half dozen other legendaries that have more cause to be there. EDIT FROM APRIL, 2019: It's because of a bug. It's supposed to be Mew.  No, I don't think we need to load my endgame save. Let's ignore the question of why I have two Gardevoir... or why it looks like I have a purple maned boar.  Much better! Do official pokemon games have multiple save files? I don't believe ORAS did, but I didn't pay too close attention regardless.  Just need to change a few settings real quick. First off, text speed goes to max where it will never leave.  Music gets muted and sounds get cut to 80% of normal. The music that comes with the game doesn't loop correctly. For instance, the pokecenter theme is 30 seconds of music and then 5 seconds of nothing while it repeats. I'm sure I could fix it, but that's expending effort and it's a lot easier to just open iTunes and catch up on my growing podcast backlog.  Difficulty will stay on Normal for most of the game. The difficulty setting only affects rival battles, gym battles, and major plot battles. Teams on Easy generally have lower levels and the movesets aren't as dickish. Hard mode is just All Competitive Viable Teams All The Time, and gently caress that noise. Turbo speed doesn't matter because after the first update I'm gonna open CheatEngine and toggle the speedhack. For whatever reason this game is really goddamned slow by default. Turbo is supposed to alleviate that, but it doesn't work during scene transitions or during some pokemon moves... or during plot moments. Also it's a "hold to activate" thing, so it's a lot easier to tell CheatEngine to run the game at 1.75x speed and have something playable. Purity mode is going to be off because this game has something called Delta Pokemon that are equal parts amazing and stupid and they need to be shared with the world. I unironically love them and Purity Mode disables them. Constant Daytime is on because otherwise the game is way too dark at night. Anyway, that's all the options that I needed to toggle. Let's boogy!    I mentioned above that I've beaten this game before. I'm kinda curious how some plot details go in the traditional story. We're not gonna find out because this is a pokemon fangame LP. We're in this for the atrocity tourism. Dark all the way!  are cults. switch later on if it's too tame or edgy.This setting can be changed at pretty much any time, as long as we're in a pokecenter. The story isn't even all that edgelord-y, to be honest. This is certainly no Reborn.   The framerate takes a sharp nosedive when the view turns like this. That aside, this is a pretty nice view of the region.  The game even does this stylish little spin for us.  That desert is right next to an ocean, but it's entirely enclosed by a mountain. That's more thought than most map designers give!      : We live in dark times, my friends. A grave loss has recently befallen us all.  protect his people. This game has a lot of text and while I'm sure a transcript exists somewhere, I don't care that much. This isn't high art, it's a pulpy pokemon fantasy story.  "As you know."   : They won't rest until the world is remade exactly how they want it to be. : He saved us.   dead.    The Augur is pretty much the leader of the region. You know all the crap you see Champions up to in mainline pokemon games? The Augur does that here. So what we're seeing is some rando standing up and saying "Hey. Look at me. I'm the Captain now." : We will stand our ground! We will not let these cultists... these insurgents... split apart ouf families and destroy the place we call home! Long live the Torren Region!  gently caress no! People that would do a challenge run of Pokemon Insurgence are not well. My first run had multiple fights where the only reason I won was because I kept stalling with revives. I'm no competitive battler, but I've been playing these games since they first came out in the US over 20 years ago. This game is really loving hard.   Invoking Arceus as you would a diety is such an awkward way to phrase things.    : If you value your memories at all, you'll listen to what I have to say.    In the grand tradition of pokemon LPs, this is a female protagonist. Her name was picked at random.   Our three choices are "pasty" "anime character" and "slightly tanned." These pictures are also all liars because our character does not, and in fact will never, wear shoes. We will walk through multiple active volcanoes, a marsh, and several snowy fields. Some searching has turned up that with the 1.2.3 patch that came out more than 2 years ago, the player character decided to forego shoes for whatever dumb reason. Sure, why not? For what it's worth, we're playing as an anime character with purple hair. : Thank goodness. You still remember everything!   We're being menaced by a Gengar.   : You need to wake up!    : Soon, Dream Eater will rid the prisoner of the last of her memories. Hopefully we'll be done within the hour. This is Persephone. She's one of the game's many, many, many antagonists, and a particularly annoying one at that.    : Excellent. Finally, we'll have fulfilled our end of the bargain. Good work, you two. : Will you be attending? : Very well. I'll see you upstairs, then.  : Kill them, of course. I expect you upstairs within two minutes. Exeunt Persephone. : Why are we bothering to wipe their memories if we're just going to kill them anyways?  Persephone is kind of a terrible boss. The "violently psychotic" sort.  : Mew... This is the only pokemon voice clip in the game. Everything else uses the clips from the real games. Well, kinda. For some reason Chansey uses Fearow's noise... and Charmander's cry plays its second half before its first half. What I'm getting at is sound isn't this game's strong suit.   Mew chases off the Gengar... : The Gengar's gone... go. Follow Mew, get out of here, and never look back. Good luck. We're finally given control! So let's wander around and explore our prison.  The game's a tad buggy. This will sort itself out eventually.  The hallway twists around back on itself. There's a RPG Maker map below.  Items typically show up on the field as the thing they are. So a purple bottle means a regular potion, for instance.  We started in the top left. The potion room is the top right. Our next stop is the bookcase in the bottom middle.   Long story short, there's five cults: Cult of Darkrai, Abyssal Cult, Infernal Cult, Sky Cult, and Perfection. We're being held prisoner by the Cult of Darkrai who, for some reason, worship the Legendary Pokemon of Nightmares.  All the other doors on the floor are locked. So let's just head upstairs...  No point in posting a map. We can only go one place. So let's keep heading up!      the base. Okay cool. We now have a quest: we need to find some DNA.   I guess the Cult of Darkrai isn't very hygenic.  Gross. Do you want diseases? Because this is how you get diseases!   So Mew has been following us around. This isn't just because it likes us. Insurgence is like HGSS in that the first pokemon in your party will follow you around on the overworld. You can talk to them and they'll give a cute little text box about whatever it is they're doing. Mew, however, is special in that it can use its special powers.  So let's turn into a smelly cultist and get the hell out of here.    Did I say "get out of here"? I meant "let's steal everything that isn't nailed down."   Well poo poo that didn't last long.  Moving on, let's go down first.  This is the exit. Maybe if we ask really nicely, this religious fanatic will move aside.  Fine.  Also grabbing that potion up above. The positioning for these items is a little finicky. You have to be just above its sprite in order to take it.  More goodies in the toxic waste meeting hall up north.  Up on the next floor is a large pool of Ecto Cooler. We can't get back in here until the very end of the game, but there's actually a Master Ball hidden just out of sight south of where we're standing now. Not being able to get it is a tad frustrating, but it's not like I'd actually use it even if I did have it.    Over to the right here we can find another gathering hall.   I guess Persephone really likes Darkrai?  Also I want to give a shout out to awkward phrasing that makes it sound like all the cults want to summon Darkrai.   "The exports of Kalos are numerous in amount. One thing they export is corn, or as the Native Unovans call it, "maize". Another famous Unovan was Hilda. In conclusion, Kalos is a land of contrasts."  fighting tools.  Isn't this the backstory of that weird immortal that appeared out of nowhere at the end of the plot in XY? Well, whatever. Let's move on.  ones... That's a lot of cultists.     Seems like Darkrai is on everyone's minds currently. Makes sense.   "Yeah, we ate together at lunch earlier."  This person is not strictly wrong.   I don't get it, but bless your heart regardless.  Is it the stab wounds? I bet it's the stab wounds.  The jerk on the left and middle say the same thing, and we can't talk to the guy on the right because he's past the cutscene trigger zone. So let's watch the sacrifice I guess? : And so we begin...: Miss! Please, you can't do this! I don't want to die! different?Persephone is a rules lawyer it seems. : Activate the ritual circle!  : I call upon you to enter our world! of nightmares forever!  In Insurgence, Legendary pokemon all have a special animation when they appear.  A design appears that I guess somehow relates to the pokemon in question, and their cry can be heard repeatedly.    I'm gonna just put her entire speech in with no commentary. You'll understand why.  immortal.  that day.          Pffhahahahaha. I'd feel bad for laughing at her, but she's so pathetic. : ... ... ...The game loves its ellipsis abuse.   : What a waste of a grunt...   : Get out of my way.   Edgy. Most of the grunts have new dialogue, but it's all some combination of "what went wrong?" or "Wow, Persephone sucks. I wish I wasn't a cultist." Well, okay. Maybe not that last one.  You can count the number of remaining cultists on two hands. Give it enough time and she'll run out of cannon foder.  Wayyy ahead of you.  This is back near the exit.   How this cult survived this long I'll never know.  Let's get the hell out of here.      The exit to the forest area is just below us. But before I end this update, let's find out what happens if we get into a fight...   Mew is kinda powerful, as it turns out.  I personally wouldn't use Ancient Power, but that's just me not liking moves with only 5PP.  So let's end the update here. NEXT TIME: We explore the first town and get our starter DoubleNegative fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Sep 25, 2018 14:23
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Well it's not as bad as Reborn, but that...doesn't say much... Count me in, I'm curious as to how bad Pokemon Cult can get.
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Sep 25, 2018 14:59
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Well the game started with turning the main character into a (temporary) Animorph, a series which knows how to do dark storylines the right way, so hopefully this isn't an absolute dumpster fire.
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Sep 25, 2018 15:04
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What is it with Pokémon fangames and being edgy? Teenagers?
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Sep 25, 2018 15:12
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Gotta be mature to show that you are grown ups and you are not playing a kid's game.
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Sep 25, 2018 15:22
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Oh boy, another edgelord fanfic-turned-game!! Just what we've always needed.
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Sep 25, 2018 15:25
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Why not. At least I know for certain that this can never be as bad as Reborn. Plus they get automatic bonus points immediately just for the Pokemon-following mechanic.
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Sep 25, 2018 15:46
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To answer your question, no, Pokemon games only have one save file. Multiple save files is the realm of the fangames, at least until LGPE comes out and how the Switch works forces the games to have different saves for different profiles. That'll be a good change. Nothing in this seems to be one though, but at least the edgy here is kind of hilarious in the wrong way, that's far better than how disgusting Reborn is.
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Sep 25, 2018 16:02
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Good to know that the clothing you're wearing is inscribed into your DNA.
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Sep 25, 2018 16:03
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I'm looking forward to watching this game fall apart.
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Sep 25, 2018 16:04
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Well, this is... promising. We get Arceus worship and cults before the player character even shows up, that's got to be some kind of record. All aboard the wreck train! Geomancing posted:Good to know that the clothing you're wearing is inscribed into your DNA. I was thinking about this also. If eeeeeeeevil robes are literally part of your body, it almost makes sense to join a cult. I mean, what else are you going to be able to do?
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Sep 25, 2018 16:19
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Part of me is just hoping that by the end of the game/post-game the game just goes "And then everyone died, the end!" just to gently caress with people.
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Sep 25, 2018 16:35
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"Promising" somehow seems like both the right and wrong word to use here. Maybe it's the actually-kind-of-novel escape sequence with Mew, maybe it's the insanity taken to eleven in the first five minutes, maybe it's the promise of these Delta Pokemon. If nothing else this is certainly attention-grabbing. I genuinely kind of want to know what's going on despite expecting it to be catastrophically stupid, so well done on the cold open, Insurgence.
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Sep 25, 2018 16:54
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You've got to respect giving the cult huge concealing robes and deep face-covering hoods, and then having the player disguise herself by magically transforming into a dead guy instead of just wearing a robe.
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Sep 25, 2018 19:51
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So what cult do you think the new guy in charge runs? Personally I've got my fingers crossed for the cult of Shaymin.
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Sep 25, 2018 20:38
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I was thinking about LPing this but was sort of putting it off until Reborn finished, which is looking more and more like it'll take another year or something. So I'm glad you actually went and started! Do you mind if I share some of my experience/thoughts on parts the game (after you get to them obviously, this game is too  to spoil)?For now, all I have to say is that I really like the Darkrai Cult's uniform.
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Sep 25, 2018 22:11
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Draxion posted:I was thinking about LPing this but was sort of putting it off until Reborn finished, which is looking more and more like it'll take another year or something. So I'm glad you actually went and started! Do you mind if I share some of my experience/thoughts on parts the game (after you get to them obviously, this game is too I figured OFS would tackle it after Reborn, but there is a strong possibility that he simply ends up in a loop of releasing an update and having Amethyst dump another chapter. The game isn't done after all, who knows how long it'll be before it wraps up. Glad to see this though. As stated in the intro, this game isn't that bad. It's not good, but it's not aggressively bad like Reborn is. Plus, Deltas are awesome. I stand by that.
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Sep 25, 2018 22:31
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Draxion posted:Do you mind if I share some of my experience/thoughts on parts the game (after you get to them obviously, this game is too Please, by all means! That's half the fun.
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Sep 25, 2018 22:42
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Having been treated to various screenshots and vaguely contextualised plot developments during DN's initial run of this, I'm definitely eager to see how it all fits together. This is going to be an ~~experience~~
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Sep 26, 2018 00:15
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FoolyCharged posted:So what cult do you think the new guy in charge runs? I think the entire region is some sort of Arceus cult. I mean come on, their leader is called "Augur". That's a warning sign right there.
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Sep 26, 2018 01:41
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I gotta say, I love the fact that Darkrai just wants nothing to do with this loving cult. She just summons him, and he NOPE’s the gently caress out of there. I hope all the cults end up being this pathetic, but probably not.
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Sep 26, 2018 01:41
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I actually tried playing this earlier in the year, mostly cause Delta Pokemon seemed interesting enough, but all the cool Deltas are on a completely different level curve than the rest of the game which...  good luck with this
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Sep 26, 2018 02:16
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DoubleNegative posted:
 No kidding.  I made a path to it. And no other edits.
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Sep 26, 2018 02:39
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What's with the green fluids? Is Ra's Al Ghul supplying Lazarus Pits to these cults?DoubleNegative posted:
Thank you for asking so I don't have to, random goon. Also, it's not a fan-game exclusive thing, but I really hate conversations that begin with "As you know", because 95% of the time there's no reason to even say the thing you're following up with if the person already knows. Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 02:57
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As you know is the sign of bad writing, and it's frustrating when it crops up because it means a super awkward exposition dump.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:28
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Robindaybird posted:As you know is the sign of bad writing, and it's frustrating when it crops up because it means a super awkward exposition dump. Honestly, any time "As you know" shows up it can be removed, or replaced with (un)fortunately and it would flow much better.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:54
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HardDiskD posted:What is it with Pokémon fangames and being edgy? Teenagers? Pretty much. Gotta have all the pointless death and EDGE to balance out your cockfighting simulator in the minds of an insecure kid/adult.
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Sep 26, 2018 03:57
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Confirmed Deaths: 3 Starting strong I see. Can't imagine how the normal non-edgy plot handles this unless it's literally starting you at home in your bed with mom downstairs, skipping this whole edgy mess.
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Sep 26, 2018 06:01
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In the non-edgy version, Persephone
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Sep 26, 2018 06:11
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I'm guessing Mew wouldn't need a blood sample to disguise the protagonist.
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Sep 26, 2018 06:20
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I just realized the cultists' robes are literally Darkrai cosplay with the white hoods and red neck thingies. Persephone's hat even has a white tail and a chunk covering her right eye 'cause that's what Darkrai's head looks like. They really are the dorkiest, most uncool cult ever.
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Sep 26, 2018 06:27
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I think the only reason Mew has ancientpower is in case you run into a dark-type during a Randomizer run. Which you can totally do in insurgence. As well as a 'no-running' challenge. (at least I think you can) You see the issue here. Also: I am more down for this LP than possibly any LP in the history of my life. I love this dumb game. ChrisBTY fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Sep 26, 2018 |
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Sep 26, 2018 07:20
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...why do you have over ninety-one hours on your endgame save?
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Sep 26, 2018 18:54
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Miliardo posted:...why do you have over ninety-one hours on your endgame save? You can knock off a few hours to me leaving it running while I did other stuff, but that was less than 10 total. Another good 6 hours of that was me dicking around in the postgame doing stuff. Pokemon Insurgence is a very, very long game. 
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Sep 26, 2018 19:06
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Miliardo posted:...why do you have over ninety-one hours on your endgame save? It's a long game. I cheated pretty heavily to skip a lot of the leveling and I've still got 60ish hours in.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:06
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By the time I finished the Battle Island in Pokemon Pearl I had clocked at over 200 hours. So, y'know.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:09
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Yeah I also play official games pretty slowly and can sometimes get over 100 hours before beating it, definitely to 100 after postgame stuff. I'm not gonna hold it against DN when fangames usually go longer than official ones, regardless of whatever series the fangame is from.
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Sep 26, 2018 19:23
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Lmao @ darkrai just running away “Lady, what the gently caress, I’m getting out of here.”
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Sep 26, 2018 19:44
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So long as those hours are actual content no one will complain. I've gotten over 200 in Y but it was a combination of actual game, making teams for other fun stuff, Wonder Trading and a livingdex, so it never really felt boring (beyond that one time I tried getting one 5 IV mon. Never again). The problem is when that game time comes from the game blatantly wasting your time, like Reborn does with fake Gym Leaders and stupidly long forced detours when you had an objective (break the rock to save children).
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Sep 26, 2018 20:02
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