Nexomon: Extinction (2020)

I've been on a Pokemon knockoff fixation lately and I've pretty much tried every single one of the well known one, most recently the first Nexomon

You may recall that the deal with Nexomon is it tried to be an old school rpg story with a simplified Pokemon system. The focus on telling a story remains in extinction but it's somewhat less clumsy though it remains nothing special and nothing necessary. The cringe humor is back to get it's revenge and it's dialed up to eleven. I'll give it to them, it's actually funny now. Sometimes. There are countless callbacks to the events of the first game so if you played that it will help but you won't be lost if not.

Importantly, this is a solid Pokemon game. It fills in all the complications the first lacked, plus some improvements Pokemon could use. Notably, the experience levels with you. Wild Nexomon everywhere will level and evolve as you yourself succeed in your adventure. Trainers will return over and over with healed teams and rematch you as many times as you like, making grinding easier. And you'll need it. Leveling is very slow this time.

There are improvements to the look and feel of the game that are more modern than the original.

Overall, this is the Pokemon experience you are looking for.

Started this up on Saturday because I wanted to play something Pokemon-like, before the Diamond/Pearl remakes arrive later this month.

I played the first game earlier this year on PC, since it wasn't on Switch yet. I'm about six hours into Extinction so far and there are definitely some differences in the UI and even gameplay.

Capturing Nexomon is definitely more involved: There are new types of Nexotraps specific to Nexomon types that can be crafted from shards that you mine from stones that are all over the place. The % chance of capturing them is shown when you pull up the capture menu. You can feed them treats, fruits, etc. that you've found or purchased to increase this percentage. When you throw a Nexotrap to capture a Nexomon, you also have to do a randomly-generated button press (A/B/X/Y) of about 10 buttons. I don't really know how that affects the accuracy of the catch. It wasn't explained at all, so the first time I went to capture a Nexomon, I was just kind of looking at it for a few seconds until I saw the countdown in the top left corner and realized I was supposed to be pressing buttons.

There are a toooon of new Nexomon. There's an area that you can access before you even go to the first city, where each section of the map offers like 30+ different Nexomon, so I was able to get some of the ones I'd wanted just from skimming the Nexopedia online beforehand. I didn't stay in the area to catch absolutely everything, but it's wild that there were so many available right away. I was used to each area offering quite a few new options in the first game because there are so many Nexomon to begin with, but I had around 50 unique Nexomon in my bank before I moved past my home/orphanage.

Story is not very clear so far. A good amount of time has passed since the first game, from what I've gathered. Lots of fourth wall breaking, as with the first game, which is generally pretty funny.

Edit to add: They also added two new types, Ghost and Psychic. I'm still trying to learn the type advantages because I don't remember them all from the first game and some just don't really make sense. Also, damage is either just neutral, effective, or not effective. Basically, normal, 125%, or 65% damage. And there are still no dual types. Ghost and Psychic both do extra damage to Normal. So weird.

I've been excited about this one!

I never played the first one, which is usually not how I roll, but I did just pick it up on Steam as well for $10. I might actually start it up today instead. (It's also on iOS and Android. I do play some mobile games, but they're typically just Yahtzee or like match 3-and-design-the-garden chill games, not RPGs.)

I'm not sure why, but this iteration is only $20 on the Switch eShop. I was gonna preorder it on Amazon and get a physical copy, but ended up not doing so, and now it's down from $40 to $30 but wouldn't ship until mid-September to early October!

Anyway, I've got some teacher work to do right now, but I'll likely post some updates later!