Usually I beat the E4 before leaving a review so I'd have screenshots of my Hall of Fame but this time I think I'm gonna call it early. I just reached Victory Road and decided it was too tough for me to keep going. If even normal CoolTrainers are causing me to white out, I don't want to imagine what the E4 and Champion is like.
I guess I'll start with what I really liked, and I think it's obvious to anyone already: the sprite work. Goddamn this is some style. The Fakemon are absolutely hideous-- and I mean that in a good way. They truly put the "monster" back in Pocket Monster here. Every entry looks nothing short of a monstrosity. Apparently the designs came from randomly generated prompts, which is both hilarious and amazing. It shows the incredible talent and imagination of the artists that brought all of these designs to life in truly incredible sprite work.
My complaint would be that no documentation exists online. And I don't mean super detailed stuff like movepools and individual base stats. I mean just the basics (like Typing). The designs, while very imaginative and well-realized, are so abstract and horrifying that it can be hard to tell what everyone's Typing is. In every battle you run into, you essentially have to probing the enemy Pokemon with every element you have until you stumble upon a weakness or a resistance. Considering the high difficulty curve, this is a luxury you cannot often afford; meaning you'll be doing a lot of save scumming just to find out what the heck you're up against.
The closest I've been able to find is this graphic from Reddit:
![[PokeCommunity.com] QuarantineCrystal [FULL FAKEDEX - 12 GYM+ DEMO OUT NOW!] v. 0.804 - updated 03/02/2024 [PokeCommunity.com] QuarantineCrystal [FULL FAKEDEX - 12 GYM+ DEMO OUT NOW!] v. 0.804 - updated 03/02/2024](https://data.pokecommunity.com/attachments/68/68670-ab7f5db223e3ecc3236b11c3b5a77794.jpg)
Even this definitely helps a LOT, but as you can see it's still quite incomplete.
In the off chance that one of the devs is actually reading this, I am begging you: please release some sort of documentation that shows the Typing of each mon. That's all. I don't need movepools, locations, base stats, or anything more. Just a helpful document telling me what attacks I should be using against the four-headed monstrosity bearing down on me with claws, wings, eyeballs, and tentacles.
If I had that then I would happily try the game again, even over from scratch. But as it is right now I think it's just too frustrating for me to pick up again. Kudos again to all the very talented artists, spriters, and coders that worked on this unique and ambitious rom hack.