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Pokemon Uranium (PC) artwork

Pokemon Uranium (PC) review


"PU: A Nuclear Waste"

Pokemon Uranium (PC) image

There are two types of abysmal games. You have your unfinished garbageware made by poor use of inexpensive engines like Unity and Unreal Engine 4, the five-buck drek lurking around in the Steam store. There are also finished games that are bad by design, by intentional decisions that just end up making the final work less than it should be. It's hard to even consider the former category to be games, yet the latter are complete works that may be plagued with technical issues but suffer chiefly from they way it was meant to be made. Despite being the product of nine years in development, Pokemon Uranium is a dual-type monster; it's unfinished in many aspects, while what functions is horribly designed, resulting in one of the worst RPGs I've ever played.

Pokemon Uranium's top selling point is that it is a new take on a familiar property, while the unfortunate result is that it's just a fangame with a grimdark story. I'm of the opinion that a major strength of the Pokemon world is its light-hearted charm, but I'm open to an exploration of the material akin to the Pokemon Adventures manga, an adaptation that expands upon themes touched upon in the original games while not betraying the original tone. Uranium is of the delusion that great storytelling is comprised of heavy-handed themes, impactful moments taking place mostly offscreen, direct exposition, predictable plot twists, and occasional profanity, belying not maturity but vulgarity. Uranium has nothing to do but rehash Team Plasma's Poke-PETA shtick and prattle on about nuclear energy killing everything -- even though nuclear plants don't even have enough pure fissionable material to explode and nuclear waste can be recycled into more fissionable material and ok let's get back to the game. Point is, it wants to bring up interesting themes yet suffers from a lack of subtlety and originality and especially attention to detail.

Pokemon Uranium (PC) imagePokemon Uranium (PC) image


Of course, the biggest draw of the fangame aside from a unique tone is a unique world to go along with it. Uranium takes place in a new region with an aesthetic akin to the fourth generation DS games: Diamond, Pearl, et cetera. At worst, the new locales are unoriginal yet not unattractive, demonstrating wide variety and pleasing architecture. What's really unattractive are the new Pokemon designs, many of which wouldn't be too out of place in a rainbow-tinted Silent Hill. There's no syntax among artistic elements (even less so than the main games), so everything looks as if it's from several different crummy Deviantartists (which kinda is the case). For every Nucleon or Hazma, there's ten more like Theriamp or Brain Fish or Onion Punch Man or Whatisthisfreak. It's as strange to see these malificient mutants among mainstay 'Mons as it is to see the awful animations in and out of battle. Sold yet?

Awful writing and presentation means that only the gameplay remains to salvage the game, but Uranium is up to the task of thoroughly ruining the Pokemon formula. The pacing has the brisk flow of dying peat moss; most of the new Pokemon give hardly any experience points so that means lots of the worst part of any RPG, grinding. As in, "grind for over 90 minutes to beat any given boss" kind of grinding. This is especially difficult because encounters and trainers have Pokemon that can somehow pose serious threats to team members five or more levels higher than them. You're expected to be as well-armed as a competitive player, but you've almost no means to do so given the meager resources at your disposal -- even Rich Kid trainers give hardly any currency here. It really doesn't help that trainers have a nearly-full team by the fifth town and that the variety of Pokemon at their disposal is meager. Extra repetition!

Pokemon Uranium (PC) imagePokemon Uranium (PC) image


Make no mistake, you'll need to be doing a lot of grinding, because the game just doesn't relent in its aggressive annoyingness. Along the way you'll meet walls like fourth gym leader/lousy tv star Sheldon's Tracton, a Steel/Dragon backhoe tank with tough defenses, a good moveset, an Attack stat of 110, Speed of 100, stat buffs, healing, and SPEED BOOST -- translation: something that'd wipe the floor with pretty much any Pokemon in the competitive scene. And things get worse from there: adjacent to a town with no PC is the Anthell dungeon with its uncapturable, 600-base stat total semilegendary; there's a dungeon maze with a timer, slowed movement, and dangerous enemies; and the gauntlet of bosses at the end have foes that can one-shot and outspeed level 100s... Did I mention there's an optional built-in Nuzlocke mode to deny you the use of a Pokemon after it faints, just in case the base game isn't hard enough for you?

Of course, the experience would be incomplete without technical issues, and it's amazing how common these are for other players, instead of these faults being weird outliers for me. Despite not being quite Crysis-tier, Uranium runs like molasses on most computers when it isn't constantly crashing. Almost every effect causes problems, my favorite occurring during a "dramatic" scene with rain covering only half of the screen. Or maybe how one can see the other floors of certain buildings by just walking up to the walls. Or maybe how you can't even go to every city when you finally get fly after the last gym. Or maybe how one can get phone calls during dialogue. Or maybe how mandatory dialogue glitches out because a full system font wasn't implemented. Nine years of quality!

Pokemon Uranium (PC) imagePokemon Uranium (PC) image


Despite its massive shortcomings, Pokemon Uranium is hailed as one of the best fangames to date as the likes of Castlevania: The LeCarde Chronicles, Hurrican, and Yume Nikki: Memories of Replica slip under the radar. As a roll of bad Deviantart of the game's OCs kicked off the credits, I couldn't help but think about all the work put into this mess. Nine years produced a game with as little aptitude in technical and mechanical regards as Sonic '06, except this game is turn-based and lasts upwards of 40 hours unless you use Cheat Engine to even the odds (and still get destroyed often) or be smart and quit. This isn't some Newgrounds flash game; people poured their lives into this project. It reminded me of how Ed Wood, somewhat unfairly considered the worst director of his time, couldn't make competent cinema to save his life yet had a passion and love for film-making. It goes to show how love for a medium does not necessarily carry with it an understanding of how to make a work reach its full potential, and it makes me appreciate all the more those who get it right. Someone cared about making Pokemon Uranium, but not enough knew what they were doing. One can but hope that instead of being influenced by the choir of unprofessional praise or the halted development of the game due to concurrent takedowns of other (better) fangames, the developers of Pokemon Uranium learn from their mistakes and use that experience to make better works in the future.



Follow_Freeman's avatar
Community review by Follow_Freeman (August 06, 2018)

When he isn't in a life-or-death situation, Dr. Freeman enjoys playing a variety of video games. From olden shooters to platformers & action titles: Freeman may be a bit stuck with the games of the past, but he doesn't mind. Some things don't age much.

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JoeTheDestroyer posted August 16, 2018:

Oh man, this was a good (apparently well deserved) bash review.

Your description reminds me of the Xbox 360 indie game West, which was a turn-based RPG with a super heavy-handed moral story. Like, there's a part where an NPC tells you that some of things you encounter might be symbolic, as if the player couldn't figure that out.

The main difference is that West is extremely easy and short. I finished it in under 2 hours.

Also, Ed Wood is definitely not the worst filmmaker. Andy Milligan and Barry Mahon were way worse.
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Follow_Freeman posted August 16, 2018:

Thank you! I wouldn't normally give any bad press to a nonprofit fangame, but this is one that is very popular yet very bad, so I think it may be good that others have an idea of what they're getting into. As for the running time of this game, there's too many variables to tell, but I imagine it would be at least around 20 hours due to the grinding. Grinding, grinding grinding.

Oh, yeah, plenty of worse guys than Ed even back then, but he's widely considered the worst, so I used him as an example. I'm familiar with Barry Mahon's work, but just a browse on Letterboxd for Andy Milligan looks absolutely horrendous. I think I'd rather watch Uwe Boll's filmography! Or get punched by him.
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tomoshi posted May 09, 2020:

There are several problems in your review:
1) First of all, the comparison with pokèmon adventures does not make sense: that is a manga that differs a lot from the games of the main series, for example it has a decidedly darker story that can be unsuitable for children (who are still the main target of the entire franchise).
For example the theme of death: even in the games of the main series pokèmons die, however when they are defeated in battle they are always KO'd, they are never killed on the battlefield.
In Pokèmon Adventures, on the other hand, death is portrayed in a much more explicit and realistic way with pokèmon being cut in half and brutally killed by the foe pokemons.

Source:
https://www.polygon.com/pokemon/2018/9/25/17870422/pokemon-adventures-manga

Image:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-HAynjDcTzeVGK_Lggv5DC3YLnQ=/0x0:731x549/920x0/filters:focal(0x0:731x549):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/ uploads / chorus_asset / file / 13103913 / arbok_slashed.png

And there are many other examples (parts of cities that are completely destroyed and hundreds of innocent citizens who die), I will put this article in Italian that explains very well the differences between games and manga adventures:
https://www.animeclick.it/news/76865-pokemon-adventures-le-scene-piu-cruente-del-manga

So there are 2 different types of stories that cannot be compared: Pokemon video games are products that have children as the main target of reference, while the Pokemon adventures manga is aimed at a more mature audience.

Pokèmon uranium is a game developed along the lines of the games of the main series, but tries to explore some themes never faced before (first of all the pokèmon environment that is damaged by men because of the nuclear power plants they built).

2) You complained about the grinding, saying it's against the canons of the franchise. However, you completely ignore that the grinding has always been in the main series titles, for example the postgame of Black and White: as soon as the player finishes the game he will find the pokèmon close to level 50, while the pokèmon of the coaches in the postgame will stick on levels 62-64 (the wilds in the black and white postgame are as strong as an Elite4 pokèmon).
Not to mention Red in Gold / Silver / Crystal: he is a trainer with the pokémon at level 80 (and a pikachu at level 88), but this is a boss who has been put to give the player a goal and make him he felt gratified in reaching it. But I realize that today's players are much lazier than before, so I understand your point of view.
In addition, the level scaling of the pokèmons of the gym leaders do not seem so high considering games such as Diamond, Pearl and Platinum.
https://pokemon-uranium.fandom.com/wiki/Tandor_League

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Sinnoh_League

3) One of the problems you mentioned is Tractor, which you think is too OP.
First of all he has no high defenses, he only has 70 in defense and 80 in special defense, which is very little considering that a Gliscor (physical Tank) has 125 in defense + poison heal.
70 is a fairly low defense that makes it unable to resist attacks like Earthsquake.
For the rest: Tractor is a tough pokèmon for its typing (dragon steel makes it resistant to fairy, dragon, ice and nuclear: 4 very important types in the Uranium metagame).

From the point of view of the attack it is good, but not so much: 110 is a good value, but considering that there are Pokemon like Haxorus with 147 in attack the value 110 is not particularly high (moreover Haxorus has 90 in defense, which makes it more resistant than Tractor).

From a skill point of view: yes, speed boost is actually OP, but Pokémon that are OP because of their ability are not new: they also exist in the games of the main series, look at this:
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Blaziken_(Pok%C3%A9mon
Or (Mega Kangaskhan):
https://netbattle.forumfree.it/?t=71465620

Regarding the legendary that is able to outspeed certain 100 pokèmon: generally when you have a very strong and fast pokèmon, but also very vulnerable, you tend to use priority moves: in this way it is easy to counter, but I think it's a too complex tactic.

I will stop here: but I would have much more to say.
Regarding certain bugs: the hating for certain things seems ridiculous to me, considering that they do not compromise the content value of the game and that it is only a free fangame made by fans purely for passion.
Sure: it's fair to be critical, but you could skip over certain things for a product of this kind
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mrsrunitall posted May 20, 2022:

did you dedicate your time to create the game for 10 years only for Nintendo to take it down cause they greedy? that's what i thought so stfu

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