The credits just rolled! [And a new menu screen leads me into the post-game to capture the legendaries and champions!]

Nexomon Database Completion: 250/310 -- most of what I'm missing are the above-mentioned legendary/champion Nexomon, and then the evolved forms of some others. I just stopped trying to catch everything in the later areas since I had their first forms.

Time: Around 39 hours

My team at the end:

I took a lot of quick notes as I was playing, regarding what I loved and a few things that I didn’t. The positives overwhelmingly outnumber the “negatives,” if you can even really call them that. Anyway, this is pretty long, but hopefully insightful.

Pros:

• The music. I can’t think of any tracks that were annoying or grating. It has a really solid OST! The normal battle music is a cool blend of Pokemon and Final Fantasy battle tracks.

• Nexomon/character designs. There are over 300 Nexomon in this first game. That’s honestly pretty overwhelming. However, one plus to this is that there are a lot of cute/cool/goofy designs to choose from, and most of the Nexomon of a given type learn pretty much all of the same moves, so you can really just choose what appeals to you most visually. Stats do vary, but I switched up my team as I found more “appealing” Nexomon quite a few times and it really didn’t hinder me to do so. (I used Nexopad as a reference pretty often. There are a loooooot of designs that have since been changed or updated. However, the site was useful for seeing when my team would evolve, and for checking the names of which ones I was missing from my database.)

• Backgrounds and environments. The backgrounds during battle are reflective of the area that you’re in, and they’re really detailed. I enjoyed those a lot. Overall, the areas that you explore have a lot of great detail to them. There’s a sewer area with floating tires and cans and random debris that typical sewer levels are devoid of. I thought that that was a nice touch.

• The story/characters. While it’s nothing super new or exciting, the story was decent enough, and there were a lot of really interesting characters. Your little robopal Atlas breaks the 4thwall a number of times. (Ex. “If this were a game, we’d be getting close to the end.”)

• Money from random encounters. You get money from fighting wild Nexomon! This is great, considering that was one thing I always found frustrating with Pokemon if you don’t have any trainers around to fight. Also, there are not a lot of Tamers to fight in general. Every area might have one or two, but most of the fights with people are with the Overseers or during storyline. I had over 30 hours when I fought my 20th normal Tamer (there was a Steam achievement).

• In battle, you can see whether you’ve caught a Nexomon, its type, its rarity, its level, and it’s HP (including numbers). It’s a simple enough design, but I like all of that info.

• HP/Stamina refill upon level up. Often, when traversing through a new area, you have to backtrack a lot to heal up your team, especially when you’re just fighting a lot while catching new Nexomon. Instead of PP, your Nexomon have a stamina bar. As they level, they sometimes get a bit more stamina. Each move uses a certain amount, and if they run out of stamina, you can have them rest by selecting any move they don’t have enough for, or use that turn to heal or something. In any case, having a Nexomon defeat another one by the skin of their teeth, level up, and have their HP and stamina refill…it’s nice. It works even when they level up and aren’t the active/fighting Nexomon.

Cons:

• No chance to change your Nexomon during tamer fights. You down one, and the next one comes flying out and is able to attack immediately. It doesn’t seem to take stats into effect at all since it ALWAYS happens that way. I dunno. I just didn’t like that.

• The item menu and the menu with your team/profile/save/database are different buttons. I spent like 40 hours on this game and it probably took me 35 to get used to that and not press the item button (Triangle on my PS4 controller) when I meant to check my team (Square). Don’t really see a point in separating them.

• The Database (think: Pokedex) is too simple. There are no search or organization options. Because there are over 300 different Nexomon in the game, scrolling through it (and it doesn’t scroll when you hold down the thumbstick…) can take a while, and it always resets to #001 after you close it. To expand upon this, the PC where all of your Nexomon are stored in the healing center can be organized…to an extent. You can sort by name, type, level, but not number?? Blehhhh.

• Status effects are incredibly debilitating. I guess that’s not necessarily a con—just more realistic? With paralysis, there’s no trying to attack and sometimes being successful. You’re stuck with it, unable to use any moves. Bind is similar, but goes away after a few turns. Confusion is honestly probably the worst, as your Nexomon will hurt itself the second its turn starts, AND if it tries to attack. Poison is basically the only one where you can attack while affected.

Various other notes:

-Around Zone 50/110, I found both an Exp Share and a charm for making rarer Nexomon appear more frequently. The way that experience breaks down after a battle is a little weird. Generally, it works like Pokemon in that active participants split up the experience. Other, non-active but conscious Nexomon apparently get like 2xp? It was negligible when you’re trying to actually work it out by eye, but sometimes it would result in a level-up. The Exp Share gives the active participants more and the non-active a percentage. Later, there was an upgraded item that gave the full amount to everybody.

As for the charm, this cut waaaay down on the amount of time I was spending in each zone for the second half of the game. When I was first playing, I’d sometimes clear a zone of all the available Nexomon quickly, and other times, finding the Very Rares and Specials would take an hour. (I was using a Nexomon-by-Zone guide on Steam while I played. Just a simple screen shot of each Zone where Nexomon appear and a list with the name, number, rarity, and number in evolutionary line for each.) Of course, by this point, most of the Rares and higher were 2nd and 3rd evolutions, so I wasn’t super concerned with getting everything in the area unless it happened to show up.

-Back to the experience thing: if you’re in a tamer fight, none of the experience is allotted until the end of the fight. Once you’ve defeated the other team entirely, the experience window pops up.

-There are only seven types: Normal, Plant, Water, Fire, Electric, Mineral, Wind. I didn’t make this a pro or a con because there are benefits and downsides to it. I printed out a chart and pinned it on the wall by my monitor because there were a few that I kept forgetting for the first 10-15 hours (and one because it didn’t make a lot of sense to me: Plant being good against Electric). This really simplifies keeping track of strengths and weaknesses, since all but Normal have two of each. Normal just inflicts and takes neutral damage to/from everyone else. There are no dual-types. It’s just neutral, very effective, and not very effective. This also means that you can have every type on your team without sacrificing move slots for numerous other types. I didn’t use a Normal type, but all of my team had a least one Normal move on hand.

All in all, I greatly enjoyed this game! There's honestly a lot to love, and my complaints are really just little things that have possibly been improved in the second game.

I definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys Pokemon-like monster collecting games with a decent story. Honestly, the visuals are amazing and worth checking out on their own.