Line #7 YMMV/PokemonBrownAndPrism


1	* AntiClimaxBoss: [[spoiler: Sure the Palette Gold Ranger that shows up as the {{Superboss}} at the end of the BonusDungeon in Brown does have a team of level 100 Pokemon, while the levels of your Pokemon will be in the 60s or early 70s at best by the time you reach him without extensive grinding, but he is still held back by Gen 1 AI limitations. Namely, all his Pokemon have mediocre [=DVs=], no Stat EXP whatsoever, awful movesets, and are subjected to Gen 1's completely random AIRoulette. Plus his team doesn't have Pokemon that are even that good, consisting of all three fully-evolved Johto starters, Ampharos, Rhyperior, and not even having a sixth Pokemon. As such you should be able to beat him easily even if he has a massive level advantage on you.]]
2	* BaseBreakingCharacter:
3	** As with most [[SailorEarth Fakemon]], the OriginalGeneration Legendaries in ''Prism''. People either think they're well above usual Fakemon standards as far as hacks go and don't look too far off from regular Pokemon, or they get accusations of falling into the same cliches Fakemon use and/or don't look like Pokemon to begin with. The legendaries got [[ArtEvolution sprite revamps]] in later versions that caused many to warm up to them, but they're still somewhat contentious.
4	** Earlier, the same criticisms were made about the now-scrapped Prismeon, which would have been [=KoolBoyMan=]'s original contribution to the [[EnsembleDarkhorse ever-popular]] [[FanNickname Eeveelutions]]. The WalkingSpoiler nature of this Pokemon also magnified the fans' reaction to it when they found out about it. Eventually, it was scrapped sometime before the aforementioned Legendaries.
5	* BreatherBoss:
6	** The third gym leader of ''Prism'', Brooklyn. She has only three Pokémon, one of which is a pre-evolution of the other, and all of which the player has faced earlier in the game.
7	** The sixth gym leader of ''Prism'', Ayaka. Like Brooklyn, three of her four Pokémon are ones the player has already encountered, two of which are used by her own trainers. Furthermore, because of their weakness to Fire-type moves, a faster Fire-type Pokémon could sweep all three of them. This isn't so much of the case of her wild card: Drapion, a LightningBruiser which ''doesn't'' have a weakness to Fire, and in fact can use [[DishingOutDirt Earthquake]] to counter them.
8	* BrokenBase:
9	** The sheer number of regions the player can visit in the game. Some people love the added length and interconnection between the various regions, while others view it as unnecessary bloat, not helped by the game's DifficultySpike once the player enters Rijon. [[VideoGame/PokemonGlazed Tunod]] is the most divisive of the regions, either being a cute reference to another fan-project or unnecessary bloat from a middling ROM hack.
10	** Speaking of Tunod, the region received a massive ArtShift in the 0.96 update, giving it a tileset more akin to the Generation III games (which ''Glazed'' is based on). Depending on who you ask, the new tileset is either gorgeous and technically impressive or too jarring for a Generation II game.
11	* DifficultySpike: Because the game was never officially completed due to Copyright meddling (and the unofficial Rainbow Devs haven't really addressed it much in years), Pokémon Prism is rife with a massive difficulty spike, even bigger than most common romhacks. After you beat the Elite Four and get access to the Rijon region (and other locations), all remaining gym leaders take a MASSIVE leap in level range, the strongest leaders being as high as 90. And because wild pokemon encounters are relatively untouched and stay at pathetically low levels, it's nigh impossible to train to a proper level without it taking several dozen hours. If you have the debug version of the game, however, you can lessen the sting by spawning yourself extra rare candies.
12	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Phancero, thanks in part to ''Twitch Plays Pokemon'', has gained a decently-sized following. To the point where it's become a mainstay in ''TPP'' lore and even appears in their dev team's own ROM hacks.
13	* GameBreaker: Water Rings in Prism, a holdable item that gives a massive 50% boost to the wearer's physical Attack, with the drawback of reducing their evasion. However most moves have 100% accuracy and the ones that can miss will still hit you the majority of the time anyway, and proper strategy would entail assuming these moves will always hit you. As such this "drawback" of your pokemon being less able to evade rarely matters, while strong physical attackers will wreck opponents when this ring will turn their [=3HKOs=] and [=2HKOs=] into [=2HKOs=] and OHKOS. Now getting your [[ScrappyMechanic Jeweling level high enough]] to create Water Rings entails [[ForcedLevelGrinding a ton of grinding]], but you can find one for free as an overworld item, which you can then slap onto your best physical sweeper to trivialize many battles (in particular your starter Tyranitar will make excellent use of the ring with its sky-high Attack, vast movepool, and eventual access to Dragon Dance).
14	* GoodBadBug: As it is in modern Pokemon games, [=TMs=] are now infinitely reusable. However unlike in those games where whenever you teach a TM to a pokemon, its remaining PP will match whatever amount of PP you had left in the move you replaced, in Prism a newly taught TM move will always have its full PP. A player can exploit this to infinitely restore their PP as much as they want without having to visit a Pokemon Center and without having to use difficult-to-obtain PP-restoring items, especially handy with how long caves/dungeons can be in Prism.
15	* ScrappyMechanic:
16	** Even though many features and mechanics from later generations would be ported into the Generation II-based ''Prism'', poisoned Pokémon still gradually take damage in the overworld outside of battles.
17	** Despite the many AntiFrustrationFeatures added in Prism, HM moves still cannot be forgotten without visiting a Move Deleter, while the game makes even more judicious use of HM-required roadblocks than the original Gen 2 games did. Adding insult to injury is that none of the HM moves were buffed.
18	** The phone call mechanic from the Gen 2 games was removed, which would be ok since it's a ScrappyMechanic itself, but nothing was added in its place to enable rematching any trainers. So besides losing out on the fun of rematching people, you'll have no easy way to grind money outside SaveScumming in the Game Corner until you get an Iron Pickaxe or access to the Battle Tower, the former of which you can't get until about 2/3rds the way into the maingame (plus it costs a hefty amount of Gold Tokens), and the latter you can't access until even later (and will need at least three level 50 Pokemon with good moves and Stat EXP to succeed in it).
19	** The whole Jeweling mechanic is very poorly implemented. You can only create Grass Rings until your Jeweling level reaches 4, which requires creating 17 of them to reach level 4, and thus you'll need 17 Leaf Stones. You can't buy them until you can visit Rijon in the postgame, and can only obtain them by mining, where you have a very low chance of finding them (you have at best around a 5% chance depending on where you mine), so unless you wait until the postgame, finding enough Leaf Stones just to be able to start making any other rings will require a ton of mining and spending a ton of money on Mining Pickaxes (or if you get the rechargeable Iron Pickaxe, wasting a ton of time running around). It gets a bit better once you can start making other rings as then you can use the other stones you dig up to make rings, but this gets counteracted by each ring having its own level requirement, the level gaps between when you can start making a new ring growing wider as you go up, and the amount of rings you have to make to level up increasing with each level, so the grind and money investment only gets worse and worse as you progress. Then for the big insult to injury, all those excessive rings you're making should be ripe to sell off (you'll never possibly need more than six of an individual ring, enough to outfit your entire party with the same ring), especially since the stones they require sell for a decent price themselves at 1050 yen each (and are costly at 2100 yen if you just buy them), but every ring, including the ones that require multiple stones to make, sells for a pitiful 50 yen, making all those excessive rings nigh worthless and costing you a ludicrous amount of money in the process. Fortunately, as of 0.95 rings now sell for four-digit sums, so at least the last point is somewhat remedied.
20	** Crafting:
21	*** Ability to create your own custom balls is a cool idea, but like Jeweling gets ruined by a bunch of asinine restrictions. First just like how you can only make Grass Rings at first, you can only make Poke Balls until your Crafting level reaches 4, with each Poke Ball requiring specifically an Orange Apricorn. This wouldn't have been so bad if there was an easy source to obtain Apricorns from, but it's even worse than grinding out the evolutionary stones, as you can only get Apricorns from Apricorn trees in Rijon, which only drop one Apricorn each real world day, and you're going to specifically need 17 Orange Apricorns before you can even start making any better balls, while there is only one tree available for each Apricorn. So for over two real world weeks, you can only make a single Poke Ball each day, and then just like with Jeweling, the level gap between each new ball you can make and the requirement to level up your Crafting steadily increases as you go up in level, while there's only a handful of Apricorns available each day, thus it's going to take months of real world time before you're able to craft every type of ball unless you just cheat yourself a ton of Apricorns to speed up the process. Did we also mention that you don't get to access Crafting until the postgame, in a town well out of the way? So you can't even utilize this mechanic and build up your Crafting level for most of the game, and by the time you can even access it you could have already caught all the difficult-to-catch pokemon that you would want these custom balls for. Plus there are no Apricorn trees in Naijo, so no stockpiling up a ton of Apricorns in the main game to later use in the postgame.
22	*** Also with Crafting, when crafting Master Balls and Shiny Balls, there is a high chance of failure while still costing you the Apricorn used, even if you get your Crafting level into the 90s (which practically requires cheating to do). It is especially painful with Shiny Balls, as there is no guaranteed renewable source of them (they only have a very rare chance to drop from any Apricorn tree in place of the usual Apricorn) and so very likely will only have the one you got given as a gift much earlier in the game, wasting it unless you SaveScum until you successfully craft a Shiny Ball.
23	** In order to revive the fossil pokemon in Prism, you have to solve their fossil puzzle first. This wouldn't be so bad having to do it for the first time for each fossil, but you have to do it ''every single time'', and solving these puzzles are [[ThatOnePuzzle annoyingly difficult]] too, especially if you [[GuideDangIt don't know what the fossils are supposed to look like]].
24	* SequelDisplacement: Being a more developed, expansive game, ''Prism'' gets more attention than ''Brown''.
25	* SidetrackedByTheGoldenSaucer:
26	** Pachisi is a pure [[LuckBasedMission luck-based game]], but even if one doesn't enjoy the game, one may find themself playing it a lot, as since it features battles with evolved and single-stage pokemon at significantly higher levels than the player will encounter in the wild for a while at the point you first gain access to Pachisi, it makes a rather good [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling grinding spot]]. Additionally the item spaces can give you good and valuable items that you can't buy until much later or never (such as the evolutionary stones, the custom Poke Balls that you can otherwise only obtain in the postgame, and even Sacred Ash, which can be sold for a massive 25K). You do risk potentially losing a lot of money from playing Pachisi, but you can simply save before each play and reset if you end up losing too early.
27	** The Game Corner was significantly improved in Prism, as in addition to the standard slot machines and card flipping, you now have Poker and Blackjack available to play, which are more engaging games that you can reliably build up coins from at a decent rate. There's additionally the new memory match game to win items, giving you a way to cash out your coins for items that you can use or sell, making actually profiting from the Game Corner feasible.
28	* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel:
29	** ''Pokemon Brown'' was supposed to be a sequel to [=KoolBoyMan=]'s earlier ''Fukemon''. Whereas ''Brown'' and ''Prism'' are one of the most innovative {{ROM Hack}}s of their kind, ''Fukemon'' has been relegated to OldShame.
30	** While the quality of ''Brown'' had few doubting that ''Prism'' would be a solid production, the sheer scope of the changes and the vast amount of new features ''Prism'' packed in resulted in thoroughly-impressed adulations from players after the leak.
31	* ThatOneBoss: Fighting-type gym leader Andre comes at the end of a tough segment of the game, and uses a well-rounded team that covers the typing's weaknesses and capitalizes on its strengths. Three of his four Pokémon - [[MageKiller Gallade]], [[LightningBruiser Lucario]], and especially [[MightyGlacier Machamp]] - are top-tier threats that will be a nightmare to unprepared players. Thankfully, he doesn't appear in the final Naljo gym's BossRush (probably because his [[CrazySurvivalist anti-civilization outlook]] wouldn't allow for it).
32	* ThatOneLevel: The [[spoiler:Final Dungeon]] in Brown that unlocks after you beat the Elite Four. Not in the sense that it's crazy hard or anything, but the fact that it's just a daunting slog of an endurance run. Every few tiles you walk is another trainer for you to battle, and we mean literally every few tiles; the trainers are in ridiculously close quarters with one another, there's several of them in one room, and it spans several different areas. You'll likely give up out of boredom rather than being overpowered.
33	* ThatOnePuzzle:
34	** [[InvokedTrope Invoked]] by one of the sages in Magikarp Cavern, who turns you into a Magikarp and puts you in a brutal rapids puzzle to show you the trials wild Magikarp regularly face.
35	** The jewel puzzle in Naljo Ruins has tripped up some players, as it's impossible to proceed unless [[spoiler:the player remembers that they can jump over small gaps with the Jumping Shoes]].
36	** The fossil puzzles that have to be solved each time you try to revive a fossil pokemon, where they're like the Ruins of Alph puzzles in the original Gen 2 games, but much harder. First it's much more difficult to see which piece connects to which, with each puzzle even having several side pieces that aren't obvious in which side they're supposed to go, and then there's a significant GuideDangIt aspect as the puzzles are based not on how the pokemon looks like as the original Gen 2 puzzles were done, but on how the fossils themselves look, while there are no item sprites ingame and so you'll have no idea how the fossils are supposed to look like without prior knowledge or looking it up. The fact you have to do this puzzle every single time you want to revive a fossil pokemon, even when you already solved it prior, just makes these puzzles all the more aggravating.
37	* UnderusedGameMechanic:
38	** Prism's Pokemon-only segments were hyped up as one of the big new things it added to the game. However the only times they show are up are; at the start of the game in a brief segment with your Larvitar (that was frankly pointless), the Magikarp maze a few more towns into the game (which hardly counts), and one actually decent segment right after that in Laurel Forest. Once you finish the Laurel Forest Poke-only segment, you will never encounter another Poke-only segment again in the remaining 80% or so of the game, leaving you wondering what was the point of implementing the mechanic at all. You can go back to the Poke-only area of Laurel Forest any time, but there's no reason to ever go back there once you finished it. Fortunately the current devs have stated they are aware of how underutilized the concept is and are planning to add more such segments in future releases.
39	** Brown added a bunch of new types; Gas, Sound, Wood, Wind, and Abnormal, each with a full spread of weaknesses and resistances. However each type only has one or two pokemon lines with the typing (or none at all in the case of Wind), and each type only has one or two damaging moves that use the typing (or none at all in the case of Abnormal), while Wood is the only one that actually has a good move at its disposal (in Wood Hammer). As such, these new types are mostly all inconsequential outside of using a Victreebel or Exeggutor with Wood Hammer, except for the occasional weird type interaction (such as the Gengar and Weezing line now getting destroyed by Fire moves). Prism would address this by completely removing the Wood, Wind, and Abnormal types, while expanding the Gas and Sound types by adding a couple more pokemon lines that utilize the typing and adding a variety of damaging moves to actually offensively utilize those typings with.

Context YMMV / PokemonBrownAndPrism