medarot 1 notes

Session 1:
Story beats:
-Hikaru goes to the park with his dog, uses a very well animated stick to accidentally hit a RoboRobo Gang member, and collects the Kabuto Medal that he was carrying.
-He gets Metabee from his dad, then heads to school where his teacher goes "i want you kids to go fight sharks and aliens for homework" because what the fuck
-So he heads to the beach and fights a RoboRobo gang member, who is dressed like a shark and has a shark Medarot. im assuming the other batshit stuff the teacher said is also going to be RoboRobo Gang members
-Not a thrilling story at the moment, but the mention of aliens has me intrigued.
-i accidentally locked myself out of either of the good endings by saying no to the first choice and then accidentally going into the women's bathroom (which was unlabeled)

Visual/Audio notes:
-it looks exactly like pokemon. the movement and menus all just look like pokemon
-except the overworld maps are more detailed? the park looks better than anything in pokemon
-the music is fine but there seems to be exactly one battle track so far and i do not think its good enough to carry the battles.
-battle animations are fine, it does the pokemon thing where your Medarots are represented by generic icons in both menu and in battle, while they have larger sprites that show up during attack animations. the parts system means that there are tons of combinations, and they all look good for the time
-attack animations are also very abstract, and the Medarot spites have no animations due to the mix and match aspect. so its a lot like pokemon really

Gameplay notes:
-Battles are interesting, your Medarot starts on the left side (the opponent on the right) of the screen where you choose one of three commands, and then they run towards the middle of the battlefield, where they then attack
-A Medarot has 4 parts, each with a specific amount of health that totals up to your Medarot's total health. parts are destroyed once a certain amount of damage ids dealt to them (attacks seem to target parts at random), which removes the command associated with that part. if the head is destroyed, your Medarot dies.
-Speed is a major factor it seems like, though im not sure how to control it. my Medarots seemed to vary their moving speeds, it may depend on destroyed parts as well?
-environments are factored in, but i didn't really get to take advantage of them.
-random encounters are just random people (and sometimes stray Medarots) that show up. you can use an item to run away, but defeating an enemy will give you a random one of their Medarot's parts.
-parts customization seems really cool but i don't have enough to really make use of it. your dad gives you 50 bucks to buy stuff but i didn't get to any stores yet.
-you lose a part if you get defeated in a battle, but at the start of the game this means an instant game over. you get booted to your last save spot in that case
-Medarots heal immediately after battle so there's no real penalties to this kinda stuff, which i really really like
-in the beach cave i found a knight medal and a second Medarot, so i have started crafting Sans Undertale, though i have very limited parts to use for that
-battles are stupidly long. remember to check for text and battle speed options next session. i think battle speed is going to be a major issue with the game
-you can find a 10 yen coin in the park that uses the same sprite as the medal at the start of the game, which is a very good joke
-there is an old man on the beach that has a hidden password that you can only get if you talk to him a bunch. the password apparently does nothing