Let's Play Pokemon Dark Rising 2! Final Thoughts

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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 Dark Rising 2

Originally published: http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=279049https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=297933March 6th, 2013 on Pokecommunity

Type: Pokemon rom hack, which qualifies as turn-based RPG

Length: About 45 hours... Again, it'd probably be triple this amount if I grinded naturally.

Difficulty: Thankfully, the level curve as more forgiving this time around on top of the ending not being as difficult due to the presence of Arceus... but it's still Literally Impossible Without Cheating.

Developers/Artists/Etc.:

• Creator/Storyline/Recolors- DarkRisingGirl
• Scripter- DarkRisingGirl / Patrick Symus / Shubunkus
• Music Composer- galooloo / Jillsandwich93 (First City)
• Mapper- DarkRisingGirl / Moety5/Atif
• Trainer Backsprite Inserter & Pokemon Spriter-Aryan143
• Box Art Creator & Textbox Editor-P inkish Purple
• Pokemon Spriter- Kinataki
• OW Spriter- Jbsundown
• Heroine OW Sprites- Acertony
• Main Cast Trainer Sprites- Seiyouh
• Inserted Backgrounds- Omega Zero
• Title screen/Title Screen Image- Tajaros / Nopie / Darthvader317
• Pokemon Sprites-Chaos Rush's 64x64 Pokemon Resource & all affiliates that make sprites for it.
• Physical/Special Split- Doesntknowhowtoplay
• Overworld Bases- Zelix
• 6th Gen Pokemon Sprites-Noscium / 1158
• ASM Code- Jambo51
• Userbar-Tackle/ xVaporeon
• Rom Base- Dante, Kyledove, WesleyFG, Pey!, xiros, zein, femok, and Eddiee.
• Map for the First City/Route- Kyledove
• Rom Base Minis- Wesley FG

Overall Plot:

• You are one of the chosen ones picked by Arceus to help save the planet from the scourge of Darugis. That's still what you're doing.

Pros & Cons–

·The main hero has gotten better over time

·It cuts down on HM use and gives you nice items from time to time.

·It's even shorter than the first game

·The supporting characters are way more tolerable this time around due to them not constantly picking fights with you.

·The part where you infiltrate the evil team headquarters was real neat. The fact Dark Rising Girl cut out the teleport maze and gave you the Card Key right away is amazing.

·The moments with Jean Blake are genuine and surprisingly well-written.

·Mason is a gift to mankind and I wish he was around more often. It helps that his sprite and those of his goons are some of the best in the entire game.

·It's far less glitchy - the only real glitch I've encountered was an Escape Rope one that teleported you from Misty Trees to the town where the Flying gym leader was, but that was about it.

·Arceus is literally what I asked for during the last game. Finally, a super-mon to combat the stupid-overpowered legendaries with fake base stats.

·It's something I would consider... playable, at least.

·The eventing is still not that great. There's an awful lot of events where you're just sitting there until you press A to continue, but there's also the fact that nothing really... amazing happens with the coding. I do like how it's mostly original stuff this time around, though. (Oh wow, a con that also has a pro in it?)

·The maps in this game... vary. Sometimes they're excellent like Arkaios City and sometimes they're just plain bad like the Dark Factory (or whatever) from chapter 3.

·Benga and Jalice were so stupid. Jalice was just rude for no reason and didn't really contribute much to the story. Benga, on the other hand... my god. Let's take a canon Pokemon character, make him an insane hypocrite (lol all pokemon are evil even though I use some too) and have him accomplish absolutely goddamn nothing.


... Nothing that matters, anyway - it's not like he did anything that pushed the plot along. He was just there, but he still drove me bananas, so...

·Amazingly enough, Darugis manages to one-up himself by managing to remove an entire type. He gets bonus points due to the type being the only one he was weak to (Dark/Ghost's only flaw is Fairy), which is... seriously, what the fuck. I understand this is because they didn't have the Fairy type, but this is easily one of the worst ways to deal with it.

·The plot twist at the end ruined the entire story - what little there was, anyway. I'm not kidding. Not only does it make no sense and come out of nowhere (Hoopa disguised themselves as Arceus???), it's ultimately a kick to the balls (tee hee, the main character died for no reason) and extends the series out for longer than it needed to be.

·The majority of the sprites are... bleh. Special shout out goes to Jalice's mom because I can't even tell what she's supposed to be other than a mass of blond hair and black pants.

·The level curve is still ridiculous. It may not be as extreme as the first game's but holy hot damn don't make me grind to level 100 just to beat your game.

·V being mentioned again made me mad.

·Not sure what the villain team conglomerate was supposed to accomplish aside from fanservice if I'm going to be real with you. Darugis announces that he's strong enough to wipe out the planet in six seconds, so... what's the point of henchmen...?

·The fake base stat legendaries and the 1230/1380 Base Stat Darugis forms. It wasn't enough to have max levels - the game itself had to cheat... again. I don't care if we have Arceus, that's still bad game design!

Final Thoughts (24/100):

Dark Rising 2 was a more comfortable ride than the first game... but that's not saying much.

It did improve on some of its weaker points, but it's still an overall mediocre game with at least some interesting ideas and scenarios.

It wasn't glitchy to the point of requiring a glitch doc (which, by the way, I don't think we could have done even if the game's coding was a wreck - it would have required a lot more patience we don't exactly have), but the grinding was still a major issue... not to mention the balance issues.

The plot was the biggest downfall, honestly. The writing got better with Jean Blake, your friends and Mason, but that's pretty much it - Darugis is still the big Villain Sue he was in the first game, some of the minor characters were aggravating and the twist at the end with Hoopa was just... pointless and infuriating.

Even with that out of the way, it's still not that good. It's certainly not a game I'm going to revisit at any point in the future, but I did have fun messing with its code.

Again, thanks for watching.