[Meta thread] Iron's PokeRole Adventure: The Skull Ruins

[Lord Windos]

Mates, I want to get something off my chest concerning the Seikamater Encounter, which is the plain fact I didn't like it all too much.

Sure, it was appropreitely enough EPIC, everything turned out relatively FANTASTIC despite all the odds dictating we'd get smeared all over the Palace like jam spread, and we got a generous amount of XP for what amounted to a Grab, Bag, Smash, and Run go at the Queen, so it has it redeeming qualities.

However, it doesn't change my major grips with it, which are the following:

- Essentially, the whole Encounter was far too heavily stacked against us, even for a Legendary Pokémon. Peaceful options were limited due to Seika's personality, she had an entire HIVE of minions that heavily constrained how we could approach her sans directly or sneakly and overall how we faired, and it we really had no way to gauge what and how we were supposed to fight her besides vague clues that only those with the right mind could figure out. Overall, hard and not very fun to work out a way for even minor victory against her, which we only was able to pull of due to luck more than actual skill.

- How much of a bloody stressful timesink this Encounter turned out to be. Sure, this was an Epic Boss Encounter, so it would be perfectly reasonable to spend awhile going over the details and making a good plan. Due to the above point and what little information we had, though, that period increased until it became an entirely too long and tedious affair, which was only compounded by the fact we had to constantly replan our escape from Seika.

- Seikamater herself. Every other opponent in our campaign , even the hardest ones before now, had stats we could look up and clearly defined ways of dealing with them beyond whatever surprises (both types) and moves/stats they had, so it felt much more fair to fight them. The Undead Sableye are a good example of this, as their quirk of 'not dying' unless hit by Bridge and Co was the right type of extra challenge to spice things up, as it raised the stakes in such a way it didn't feel TOO unfair and prevented us from otherwise steam rolling them, making us come up with thoughtful strategies to deal with that extra hurdle as a result.

Seikamater, on the other hand, was a great big question mark in terms of what and HOW to deal with her, beyond what Ventus could glean about her. Fighting something that has no apparent Stats or true Weakness until they are stated AFTER we commit to a plan that may or may not work, and who's attacks would outright KO or near KO any Pokémon no matter how bulky or resistant they are is.....well, unfair and unfun to fight against, to be blunt. For any character other than Nathan , who's high DEX and Evasion allows him to outright avoid damage if he got lucky (he didn't, sadly), they were without options other than to take such 'Moves' on the chin and get blasted to smitherins as a result. The final tidbit that grates on me is that her remaining HP or how much damage was inflicted on her was completely obscured, which would have made straight up fighting her even MORE difficult, as how are we to gauge how we are really fairing against her? Sure, we ended up running away from her rather than continue knocking down Pillars onto her, but had we decided to stay and fight her, that obscuring would have made things even more frustrating to deal with

In the end, I'm glad this Encounter with Seikamater is over, since I plainly didn't like roleplaying and planning through it beyond Taunting/Insulting the Queen, and found it to be a mostly hopeless affair until we actually managed to pull off a 'win' somehow. If Ralts or Slurpuff wasn't in the Web, my character would most likely just have choosen NOT to fight the Queen, since why fight against something that is THAT powerful and unknown, and whom you can't really negotiate without giving up an arm, leg, and much much more to her? Make no mistake that I didn't find it suitably dramatic or epic, nor found it COMPLETELY unenjoyable, but the bulk of it was.....less than sastifactory.

This is just my opinion and criticism, though, so everyone is free to ignore or use it as they see fit, and I won't blame you if you hold more favorable views towards it than I.