Rainbow Chara X
Impossible to gauge!
- 129
- Posts
- 8
- Years
- Age 27
- Shiny Hunting in Sinnoh
- Seen Apr 11, 2024
FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM OY
Final Thoughts
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Rating scale:
Excellent (84 – 100)
Good (70-83)
Average(50 -69)
Bad – also counts as B-Movie So Bad It's Good in case I happen to enjoy it (35 – 49)
Awful (34 to 0))
Full Title: Pokemon Snakewood (Fixed) (as the version I was playing was from a more recent patch)
Originally published: October 27th, 2010 on Pokecommunity
Type: Pokemon rom hack, which qualifies as turn-based RPG
Length: For me it took about 60+ hours even with savestates, and that's because I went out of my way to show everything. A regular player probably won't even get that far for... various reasons.
Difficulty: It started off slightly difficult, but managable. Then Veracity's Ho-oh happened. It got worse with the Elite Four as we're suddenly dealing with Pokemon in the high sixties. To say nothing of the awful kaizo puzzles or the fact that the final opponents have Pokemon in the high seventies and eighties. In short, it got unbearable to the point where I don't think I could have done it without cheats and guides.
Developers/Artists/Etc.: Cutlerine, The Rykeet (Someone who made the sprites aside from Cutlerine), Angel Laboratories (Although I'm not sure how much they actually contributed), etc.
Overall Plot:
· Kind of original… I guess?
· It has some good Fakemon (Shinigami, Zangol, Stitcher, etc.)
· The main character was pretty good… at first
· It doesn't fall into the conventional traps of a zombie apocalypse and I'll grant that it's not that predictable
· By virtue of being Pokemon Ruby, I like the music
· The murder mystery segment back in Mauville was pretty well done
· When the writing actually tried, it was surprisingly effective (Veracity & his sister, Zombie Norman, etc.)
· I'm not gonna lie – the eventing is professional. Cutlerine knew what he was doing.
· I did like some of the black comedy. Hell, even some of the dumb comedy.
· Gleis was interesting just because of how conniving he turned out to be.
· Some of the backdrops were cool, like the Frigid Way and the Film University.
· There was a lot of cut content, most of which sounded kind of interesting.
· The story is awful in every sense of the word. It starts off… okay, but as it goes on, it becomes more and more deranged and confused to the point where I couldn't even keep track of what was happening aside from bare essentials. (Aka. "Okay we went from point A to point B, let's not question what's happening for the sake of our sanity"). There's so many plot elements and characters that get introduced but ultimately wind up not having much of a purpose.
· The Deadly Seven are some of the most annoying characters I've ever seen, and the fact Cutlerine tried to make them "serious" by the end doesn't redeem them at all.
· It overstays its welcome due to being an absurdly long mess of a rom hack. Credit that Cutlerine was even able to make it last as long as a real game but wow he shouldn't have even bothered.
·The bad Fakemon heavily outnumber the good ones. The Madio and Hombone families are probably the biggest offenders. The zombie Pokemon are just as bad because a fair amount of them are just mediocre palette swaps with horrible pun names.
· Aside from a few characters (Meteor, Izumii, Veracity, Gleis, etc.), everybody is either uninteresting, an asshole, or both. The main character counts under this too, because aside from their surprising genre savviness, they aren't really that well written. The default names and their sprites are still bad.
· Speaking of sprites, a lot of the spritework in the game is mediocre at best. Cutlerine tried to preach that "you don't need good graphics to have a good game", which is an obvious excuse because even he said "don't take Snakewood so seriously". He has so many excuses that conflict with one another, which gives me the impression he was trying his damndest but didn't want people to call him out.
· The insane difficulty, especially by the end. There is no way I could have gotten past that if I didn't cheat or use guides. In fact, there's a lot of real "dick punch" parts like the Elite Four and the final Senex battle.
· The Telefang part was arguably the worst pre-postgame segment for many reasons. The biggest one being that it showed off how much of an arrogant cuck Cutlerine is long before the ending, what with the Telefang branding themselves as "so innocent could never harm a fly" while Pokemon are "mindless killing machines". Kyogre and Rayquaza's sudden offscreen deaths don't help much either.
· I've already talked enough about the Madio Caves, the Inquisition Boardroom and so on. Awful design like that shouldn't be allowed, rom hack or not.
· References being used a plot point is beyond lazy and laughable, especially when he brings in stuff like real life religions and places while he's doing this. The references themselves don't even make sense and conflict with the world of Pokemon as it is…
· The ending was probably the peak of how pretentious the game could get. Not only does Cutlerine try to pass off this entire game as if it had some greater meaning, but he tries to drag you the player into it and gives himself all sorts of undeserved praise that it's just… amazing how little dignity he really had (while making it, at least).
o See, here's the thing about stories with greater meaning: You have to make sure the story/game is enjoyable for people to even give a shit about whatever message you're trying to get across. Snakewood tries to tout "life is madness" when it's really just some horrible fanfiction put into video game form that tries to act like it's smarter than it actually is.
o That and the whole "I'm a better writer than the actual creators of Pokemon" mentality was all over this. Yeah, keep deluding yourself, buddy…
Final Thoughts (35/100):
Snakewood is not a very good game, guys. I was genuinely into the zombie apocalypse setting until everything collapsed on itself and became a clusterfuck of stupidity, references and author ego. Snakewood is a game I would never recommend to anybody unless you really want to see the madness firsthand.
If you like the game, all power to you, but just be aware of its flaws. I personally can't stand it, which is why it's the king of the Recycle Bin now.
... Fun fact: The whole "Snakewood got awards at Pokecommunity" thing? It's speculated that it even got up there because it was the only eligible hack at the time. If that's true, that's just sad.
(To be honest, I can appreciate some more stuff about it now that I've gotten some time to think about it. When it's not trying to be anything other than an outrageous parody I can give it some slack. When it turns into Cutlerine's edgy fanfic, that's sort of when it gets unironically bad.)
Future Dan Says: I must have been working something out when I was writing this. While I agree with most of what my past self said here, I really can't call Cutlerine an egotist. Again, he's apparently a decent guy and he's willing to be humble about the quality of his past work. That's really cool, so I do regret some of the things I said in hindsight.
Still doesn't make the game itself any better, though.
With that said, though... Guys, I'm glad you've all stuck around to see me finish this thing. I'm not really one for sappy speeches, so I'll just leave it at this:
Thanks for watching.
Final Thoughts
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Rating scale:
Excellent (84 – 100)
Good (70-83)
Average(50 -69)
Bad – also counts as B-Movie So Bad It's Good in case I happen to enjoy it (35 – 49)
Awful (34 to 0))
Full Title: Pokemon Snakewood (Fixed) (as the version I was playing was from a more recent patch)
Originally published: October 27th, 2010 on Pokecommunity
Type: Pokemon rom hack, which qualifies as turn-based RPG
Length: For me it took about 60+ hours even with savestates, and that's because I went out of my way to show everything. A regular player probably won't even get that far for... various reasons.
Difficulty: It started off slightly difficult, but managable. Then Veracity's Ho-oh happened. It got worse with the Elite Four as we're suddenly dealing with Pokemon in the high sixties. To say nothing of the awful kaizo puzzles or the fact that the final opponents have Pokemon in the high seventies and eighties. In short, it got unbearable to the point where I don't think I could have done it without cheats and guides.
Developers/Artists/Etc.: Cutlerine, The Rykeet (Someone who made the sprites aside from Cutlerine), Angel Laboratories (Although I'm not sure how much they actually contributed), etc.
Overall Plot:
- Hoenn is under a zombie apocalypse and you as an amnesiac with a "mysterious past" have to go find out answers and potentially stop it. You fight the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, some Taoist dude, get the favor of the Dragon King and fight the dark lord of the dead.
- Only not really because by the end the game gets sidetracked with so much irrelevant shit, cops itself out with references, and has an ending that shows the ego of the author in full force.
· Kind of original… I guess?
· It has some good Fakemon (Shinigami, Zangol, Stitcher, etc.)
· The main character was pretty good… at first
· It doesn't fall into the conventional traps of a zombie apocalypse and I'll grant that it's not that predictable
· By virtue of being Pokemon Ruby, I like the music
· The murder mystery segment back in Mauville was pretty well done
· When the writing actually tried, it was surprisingly effective (Veracity & his sister, Zombie Norman, etc.)
· I'm not gonna lie – the eventing is professional. Cutlerine knew what he was doing.
· I did like some of the black comedy. Hell, even some of the dumb comedy.
· Gleis was interesting just because of how conniving he turned out to be.
· Some of the backdrops were cool, like the Frigid Way and the Film University.
· There was a lot of cut content, most of which sounded kind of interesting.
· The story is awful in every sense of the word. It starts off… okay, but as it goes on, it becomes more and more deranged and confused to the point where I couldn't even keep track of what was happening aside from bare essentials. (Aka. "Okay we went from point A to point B, let's not question what's happening for the sake of our sanity"). There's so many plot elements and characters that get introduced but ultimately wind up not having much of a purpose.
· The Deadly Seven are some of the most annoying characters I've ever seen, and the fact Cutlerine tried to make them "serious" by the end doesn't redeem them at all.
· It overstays its welcome due to being an absurdly long mess of a rom hack. Credit that Cutlerine was even able to make it last as long as a real game but wow he shouldn't have even bothered.
·The bad Fakemon heavily outnumber the good ones. The Madio and Hombone families are probably the biggest offenders. The zombie Pokemon are just as bad because a fair amount of them are just mediocre palette swaps with horrible pun names.
· Aside from a few characters (Meteor, Izumii, Veracity, Gleis, etc.), everybody is either uninteresting, an asshole, or both. The main character counts under this too, because aside from their surprising genre savviness, they aren't really that well written. The default names and their sprites are still bad.
· Speaking of sprites, a lot of the spritework in the game is mediocre at best. Cutlerine tried to preach that "you don't need good graphics to have a good game", which is an obvious excuse because even he said "don't take Snakewood so seriously". He has so many excuses that conflict with one another, which gives me the impression he was trying his damndest but didn't want people to call him out.
· The insane difficulty, especially by the end. There is no way I could have gotten past that if I didn't cheat or use guides. In fact, there's a lot of real "dick punch" parts like the Elite Four and the final Senex battle.
· The Telefang part was arguably the worst pre-postgame segment for many reasons. The biggest one being that it showed off how much of an arrogant cuck Cutlerine is long before the ending, what with the Telefang branding themselves as "so innocent could never harm a fly" while Pokemon are "mindless killing machines". Kyogre and Rayquaza's sudden offscreen deaths don't help much either.
· I've already talked enough about the Madio Caves, the Inquisition Boardroom and so on. Awful design like that shouldn't be allowed, rom hack or not.
· References being used a plot point is beyond lazy and laughable, especially when he brings in stuff like real life religions and places while he's doing this. The references themselves don't even make sense and conflict with the world of Pokemon as it is…
· The ending was probably the peak of how pretentious the game could get. Not only does Cutlerine try to pass off this entire game as if it had some greater meaning, but he tries to drag you the player into it and gives himself all sorts of undeserved praise that it's just… amazing how little dignity he really had (while making it, at least).
o See, here's the thing about stories with greater meaning: You have to make sure the story/game is enjoyable for people to even give a shit about whatever message you're trying to get across. Snakewood tries to tout "life is madness" when it's really just some horrible fanfiction put into video game form that tries to act like it's smarter than it actually is.
o That and the whole "I'm a better writer than the actual creators of Pokemon" mentality was all over this. Yeah, keep deluding yourself, buddy…
Final Thoughts (35/100):
Snakewood is not a very good game, guys. I was genuinely into the zombie apocalypse setting until everything collapsed on itself and became a clusterfuck of stupidity, references and author ego. Snakewood is a game I would never recommend to anybody unless you really want to see the madness firsthand.
If you like the game, all power to you, but just be aware of its flaws. I personally can't stand it, which is why it's the king of the Recycle Bin now.
... Fun fact: The whole "Snakewood got awards at Pokecommunity" thing? It's speculated that it even got up there because it was the only eligible hack at the time. If that's true, that's just sad.
(To be honest, I can appreciate some more stuff about it now that I've gotten some time to think about it. When it's not trying to be anything other than an outrageous parody I can give it some slack. When it turns into Cutlerine's edgy fanfic, that's sort of when it gets unironically bad.)
Future Dan Says: I must have been working something out when I was writing this. While I agree with most of what my past self said here, I really can't call Cutlerine an egotist. Again, he's apparently a decent guy and he's willing to be humble about the quality of his past work. That's really cool, so I do regret some of the things I said in hindsight.
Still doesn't make the game itself any better, though.
With that said, though... Guys, I'm glad you've all stuck around to see me finish this thing. I'm not really one for sappy speeches, so I'll just leave it at this:
Thanks for watching.