Dokimon Quest

Briefly, Dokimon is a monster catcher whose greatest strengths have surprisingly little to do with catching monsters. Its colourful, retro-inspired visuals, eccentric cast of characters and self-aware humour give the region of Xelos a distinct personality that kept me exploring long after the novelty of battles had worn off (admittedly, it lasted some time). [b]The good[/b]: I don't think I've ever talked with every NPC in any of the mainline Pokémon games (not to mention unassuming rocks!) yet Dokimon managed to get me to do just that. The writing is aware of its tropes and manages to play with them through light-hearted and comedic dialogue. This makes the unexpectedly darker story beats stand out even more by contrast, immediately pulling into focus the main plot. While the progression is mostly linear - with it having you backtrack to locations to explore a previously unavailable route, though to be fair, the game itself does poke fun at these inconveniences - and the ability to Fly is awarded rather late in the game it never suffers from a feeling of tedium thanks to its colourful NPCs. [b]The bad[/b]: sort of – the beginning of the game is made more memorable thanks to both the enemies' and your dokimon being underpowered, which allows for far more strategy and type matchup consideration from the player. This coupled with great QoL features - such as being able to modify movesets, stats, and even teams basically on the go, as well as being able to re-battle trainers with their level ACTUALLY going up the more you battle with them (seriously, why doesn't Pokémon have this??) - makes for a pleasant experience. Sadly, despite showcasing that it can account for player's presumed level, the other trainers do not scale, meaning you'll probably end up having one trainer you grind to x188 (I know I did) preparing for the end game. Speaking of which, while the mid game suffers from very slow level build-up, where you'll often find yourself OHKOing most enemy dokimon, it suddenly ramps up, [spoiler]especially in the alt region[/spoiler]. Here the name of the game becomes speed and the ability to OHKO your opponent before they do you, or - worse - endure the evasion spam (which is funny the first few times, not so much when everyone starts doing it). While switching is a valid strategy, unless you counter the move's type, it will still do a lot of damage due to the sheer numbers being thrown around, even in neutral matchups. [b]The bugged[/b]: for some reason my starter would always attack the second dokimon in double battles, regardless of which enemy had been selected. This bug doesn't seem to affect any other dokimon, although I may have just missed it if it did. Additionally, there were a few instances during battles where certain moves would be called out by the enemy, yet the effect would differ (e.g. Glimmer doing damage or Alarm raising the user's attack instead); I mainly noticed it during the final boss battle. I'm also pretty sure an NPC's dokimon - [spoiler]the lvl100 Toola in the alt world[/spoiler] - changed its moveset after it defeated me the first time... With all that said, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and would definitely recommend Dokimon Quest to anyone looking for a more casual take on the monster catcher genre, if not for the wonderful graphics, then for the equally wonderful writing :))