I've played through Pokemon Postscriptum's demo and I must say, I find this fan game to be a deconstruction of the Pokemon formula; the main character is a courier who delivers items instead of a trainer who collects Pokemon and battles Gym Leaders, and there are no Pokemon Centers or Pokemon Marts to heal Pokemon or buy items from. Pokemon are scarce and money is practically non-existent; the main character must pick off the streets to survive. Pokemon Reborn also has a distopian setting and while it did show off the poverty stricken affects of the city, you still had access to Pokemon Centers and Pokemon Marts, so you didn't care about the people in poverty since you could not sympathize with them; it is just there for aesthetic flavor. Pokemon Postcriptum manages to show off its poverty stricken city in a much better manner thanks to the limitations in healing and items, meaning you can sympathize with the poverty stricken people since you yourself do not have immediate access to healthcare. Overall, this fan game is refreshing.
The narrative and level of writing along with dialogue is strong; one good aspect is the main character who is an actual character instead of a silent self insert character from the main games series. There are not many fan games that can make an actual character to play as; the only other fan game I know of that has done this right is Pokemon Legends of the Arena. I am glad to say that Pokemon Postscriptum does this right as well, probably in a far better fashion by making the main character a flawed human being and more interesting to follow.
Another cool aspect is the music; instead of using music from other composers, the creators have decided to make their own; most of the music has catchy jazzy tunes which matches the atmosphere of the setting, so kudos to that.
I'm liking Pokemon Postcriptum so far and it may make its way into my favorites list if it continues with its strong writing. As for any improvements I can suggest, I'd like the Cyan Bridge to be blocked off by the Police Force before the orphanage mission and after it is complete, I'd like to see Sylvia be taken away by gang members; I didn't like Sylvia info dumping her whereabouts in Blue Glove's base.
First of all the team thanks you for your kind words and support.
We strongly believe that a game truly shines when it is "developed" in conjunction with the community
which plays it, so even the slightest form of feedback is very important to us.
We were really worried we were going to miss the sweet spot between
gameplay and story, but feedback has been suggesting that thanks to the setting,
it gets away with its inherent flaws, or manages to work around them through
depiction of an immersive environment. We can't thank you enough for providing
your feedback in this. We're also very glad you were able to be immersed successfully,
as it is a difficult thing to capture when designing in general....
We haven't checked LoA out yet, but we will. We know many fangames have
reached very high standards in all aspects of game design, and we are honoured
that Postscriptum is comparable even in the slightest form to any of them.
More often than not I represent the team in PR (bad choice guys...)
but my main role revolves around composing. Postscriptum's OST
has many "compositional" flaws and some strange combinations
of instruments and styles, but this was partly on purpose. It takes
a good composer to be able to deliver something that sounds
like it is strange and off-key but is not, and since I am not a good composer,
I just left it the way it is, hahahaa. I can't stress enough how happy it makes
me that you like it! Especially when you say that it matches the atmosphere
of the setting, which was what I was going for.
We're immensely grateful for your support.
The Cyan Bridge suggestion is being implemented right now
since the progression was frankly, not designed well. We've got a great
tester on the job anyway, and many of these issues were pointed out.
Ah, you must be talking about her forced exposition dialogue.
You're right that we would have made a better choice were we to depict her
being kidnapped in real time - however this would
a) remove the reason for
adding the obstacle in the Cyan Bridge in the first place (the obstacle will
most likely be MP blocking the way since they do not want both
the player and Sylvia fighting at the same time - for obvious reasons)
b) the way she was kidnapped was not through use of force. They
were smarter than that, facing her would take much more time and
numbers. Were the player close enough to notice, those goons wouldn't
be able to successfully take her away (even though force was not
employed, in case the plan A would fail, they would just attack together
at the same time). Notice that they try the same method of doing it to
the player. Yeah, good luck with that.
We will try to implement that somehow in our future
updates, although it will take some time.
If you believe it detracts from the experience in a really bad way,
please tell us so we can prioritize it over other things.
