Pokemon Prism Review

I meant to write this a long time ago, but I got lazy I guess. Pokemon Prism, the fan game that was ordered a C&D by Nintendo was leaked around Christmas last year and I managed to play it. This fan game is a hack of Pokemon Crystal featuring around 280 Pokemon and incorporates elements from post Gen 2 games such as abilities, items, and the special split.

I would describe the story, but honestly I don't remember much other than there being an earthquake and going on a journey to collect all the badges. What I do like about this game is that there is a little character customization. When starting the game you get to choose your gender, skin tone, hairstyle, and clothing and hair color. They look a little funny in the sprites, but the skin tone options are better than they are in Pokemon Sun & Moon. There's one town in the game where you can pay a fee to change your clothes and hair, but unfortunately you can't change the skin tone you chose in the beginning.

As far gameplay and level design, this game excels in it. Adding current gen elements to older assets feels refreshing. The Fairy type is also included, but unfortunately and as far as I can tell there are no Gen VII fairies added other than Sylveon which I could never figure out how to get for myself even with the patch. Two new types are also added: Sound and Gas. You may have heard of Sound if you have been following the Pokemon fanbase for a while. In this hack Sound is weak to Normal resists Rock and is supereffective against Fairy and Steel types. Gas is weak to fire and grass and super effective against Fairies and Grass types. Both of these new types have new attacks made for them and I personally wish Laughing Gas was an official attack as it inflicts damage and lowers ATK and Special ATK. But honestly, I feel the inclusion of these new types to be unneeded and pointless. Some pokemon have been given these new types, but the amount is vary minimal. Sound gets the Whismurr line, the Jigglypuff line, and Chatot. Gas just gets Koffing, Weezing, the Gastly line, and Torkoal. There are two gyms dedicated to the lines and both use a lot of Pokemon that don't fall in line with the type because there aren't many Pokemon within the type.

As far as level design goes, this is what really makes Prism shine. They do a good job of making the game feel structurally different from most Pokemon games. From the beginning of the game you're not given a choice of three starters which consists of Grass, Water, and Fire and instead are given a Rock/Ground Larvitar that you come across by exploring the first dungeon. In that first segment you get to play as the Pokemon which is something normally only find in the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. There are multiple parts in this game like this and they offer a nice alternative to the base gameplay, but on that note I hate, hated the segment where you had to navigate a maze as Magikarp. Some of the pathways of the streams are blocked off from your vision so your progress is based off a guess a lot and it frustrated to no end so I just ended up looking up a video on YouTube to get past it. The battles in this game are also a bit more difficult than you'd find in an official game. Trainers come prepared with coverage attacks and have abilities with the potential to sweep your whole team. I can't recall how often items were used, but I think she showed up from time to time. And speaking of items....

Item usage in this game I'm a bit disappointed by. There added far too sporadically for me in the game and crucial items that help reduce grinding like Lucky Eggs and Exp Shares are added too late in the game and rewards for discovering Golden Tokens, invisible hidden items in the world. I ended up just using the debug menu to get those items. They also offer the Pokeballs introduced in Gen 2 and 4, but you won't see most of them until the post game and to me that's a little too late.

Prism also offers side activities to conduct to get game items that you would normally find or buy. Mining simply requires buying or finding a mining pick and pressing the confirm button when near a rock or wall in a cave. The item you get is dependent on the dungeon, but there's also a random factor as well. You can also smelt items in lava pits as well which grant different items, and there's a jewelry system, but I didn't partake in these as much because it was hard for me to remember which towns had these points of interests. A cool addition, in my opinion is the orphanage which allows you to donate pokemon for points and you can use those points to adopt a Pokemon that you can't get in the wild. This is great for those who want to complete the Pokedex or who just catch a lot of pokemon. There's a lot of pokemon I don't end up using so I mind as well donate them to get something in return.

After the main adventure you can explore three other regions, but it is kind of deceiving. While you do actually go to these regions the only one other than the starting one you can explore fully is Rijon. Kanto is relegated to Saffron, Johto to two, and the third to one city as well. It's also unclear how to get to a couple of these regions in the game. There are almost no hints given to you how to get past these parts and are given under the assumption that you remember a blocked off path from the beginning of the game when you're likely 40hrs in. Just a little message telling me wherabout would have been nice. After collecting all 20 badges you can go to a Battle Arcade on an island which you fight AI through a PC game in a survival mode to collect tokens. Once you have enough you can challenge the Mystery League which features the strongest of trainers. I haven't managed to tackle it yet as I found the Battle Arcade to be way too hard for me.

Overall this is a good game, but just some parts need to be worked out. I didn't even mention some evolution not working as they should either, but give it a play if you can.