Darth Wiki / Anti-Necro

"Hey Tep? Aesta's been gone a long time... is she okay?"

— Kelske, opening sequence to Anti-Necro TRIO

A Pokémon fan game series that is currently just a bunch of ideas thrown together by SleepyFox and hasn't even started being coded yet. Originating from the idea of a crossover between Shovel Knight and Pokémon, it eventually evolved from that into a different Mega Man-esque game.

The basic story follows the adventures of Kelske Torou and Tep Rosano, a Riolu and Lucario respectively, as they work together to save their home region, Essenia, from being overpowered by a recent zombie outbreak. Not all is as it seems, however, as the situation progressively gets worse as the team prepares to storm the castle that has recently appeared right in the center of Essenia...

Possible entries:

• Anti-Necro TRIO, the first entry taking place in Essenia, a Pokémon-only region. Kelske and Tep travel the region and try to figure out why the zombie outbreak is happening, and how to stop it before it gets any worse.
  • Anti-Necro REDEMPTION, six side stories, each of a different hench-Mon (except for GNN-134 and Resur-scorp, for obvious reasons) trying to redeem themselves among the Essenian people.
• Anti-Necro SQUADRON, a sequel with a ton of new characters along with the inclusion of the Alolan and Sinnoh regions.
• Anti-Necro DUO, a Prequel that takes place in Sinnoh, explaining more about how Kelske ended up in Essenia. Joined with Frostimp the Weavile, they must fight through familiar landmarks with a group of others in the background.
• Anti-Necro SOLO, a collection of mini-stories that go into the backstories of other characters, like Tep, Aesta, and others, in the form of single, short stages.

Might contain examples of:

• Advancing Boss of Doom: Necro Castle Stage 3's boss is this, as is the King Mook Superboss.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: GNN-134 was once just any other Magnezone, however was hijacked by The Grand Necromancer to be used for evil.
• Arc Number: It varies between entries. It's 3 for TRIO, 2 for DUO, and 1 for the SOLO series. SQUADRON is the only entry to not have a definitive arc number, due to the amount of playable characters varying between stages.
• Background Boss: The Grand Necromancer's second phase is this. Tetri-Security may also count.
• Bittersweet Ending: Kelske's LOST or ANTI-NECRO difficulty endings in TRIO. Sure, he's stopped The Grand Necromancer from taking over Essenia, but now he's in a very vulnerable position; if his scarf ever comes off (without his permission), he will die.

GN: How do you like that? You take this off without my permission, you're gone. Got it?

• Boss-Only Level: Necro Castle Stage 5 only consists of the Boss Corridor, and the Final Boss.
• Boss Warning Siren: Each playable character gets their own siren when encountering a boss.
• Brick Joke: In the opening cutscene for Kelske and Tep's stories, Kelske asks Tep if Aesta is okay, as she's been gone for a long time dealing with not-at-all serious personal matters (see page quote.) Beating the game as Tep rewards you with an after-credits sequence where Tep reassures she is in fact okay, as she sits near them.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Kelske does end up saving Essenia, but a scarf that used to belong to him as a gift is forcefully latched onto him, and cannot be taken off, or else he dies.
• Caps Lock: The title suffixes (TRIO, DUO, etc.) are in all uppercase letters. The higher difficulties, like ANTI-NECRO also do this.
• Challenge Run:
  • After beating the game on any difficulty, you unlock a handful of challenges that you can toggle. It's possible to turn on all of them (except for two mutually-exclusive challenges) to make one hell of a run, no matter what difficulty you're on. You can get an achievement for beating the game with all challenges except for Pro-Necro on.
  • New Game Plus: All enemies have double health and mercy invincibility. Bosses have double of the latter.
  • Castle Tour: Turns the Necro Castle into a gauntlet, where you must pass through all 5 stages in a row. Quitting or getting a Game Over at any point will force you back to the beginning of the castle. A few Wily Castles should come to mind.
  • Vacuum Start: Every stage starts you with 50 uses of your selected character's "signature" move; Vacuum Wave for Kelske, Aura Sphere for Tep, and Flamethrower for Aesta. It is possible to stock up by defeating enemies, but checkpoints and boss hallways will refill everything back up to 50, the latter giving you infinite uses to deal with the boss.
  • (mostly) Pacifist: Your attacks deal no damage to regular enemies, but instead stuns them. Bosses take damage like normal though.
  • Pro-Necro: Every time you lose a life, a zombie of your character rises where you died. Your zombies have half of your character's Max HP, and use the "main" move in that character's moveset (Vacuum Wave for Kelske, Aura Sphere for Tep, and Flamethrower for Aesta.) Now you have another reason to not die. Mutually exclusive with That's How Life Works below.
  • That's How Life Works: No extra lives. No continues. No saving. If you die (or quit) at any point in the game, that's it. Game Over. Good luck having to start the game all over again! Mutually exclusive with Pro-Necro above.
  • B-Side Shuffle: All of the stages are rearranged to be harder. Only affects level layouts, and nothing else.
• Downer Ending: In her story, Aesta ends up as The Grand Necromancer's servant, eventually setting up Kelske and/or Tep's stories.
• Dreadful Musician: Mirage sings quite horribly compared to other Altaria. However, it still manages to achieve the "dream-like" effect, by turning the arena into something similar to Dynamite Headdy's Final Boss.
• Dueling Player Characters: Kelske and Tep fight Aesta during their stories. You can unlock Aesta as a playable character by beating the game once on any difficulty.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Playing on Basic difficulty locks you out of The Grand Necromancer's second phase. Lampshaded by Kelske in the ending sequence:

Kelske: This doesn't feel right. It's like we're missing something.

• Eternal Engine: Build-A-Gain Factory is a once abandoned factory, turned on by GNN-134, a magnezone
• Evil Knockoff: The Necro Copies are this to their respective character. They have different movesets, the only similar move being their signature move (Vacuum Wave for Kelske, Aura Sphere for Tep, and Flamethrower for Aesta.)
• Expy: Mirage's fight very closely resembles the 4th major boss of Ristar.
• Four Is Death: LOST difficulty used to have an alternate name consisting solely of "四"^note The Japanese character for the number four before being changed to just... well, LOST.
• Green Hill Zone: Re-Gro Forest is a bright forest area that is highly recommended as the first mission for many new players. It's guarded by Royaleaf, the Serperior.
• Harder Than Hard: Both LOST and ANTI-NECRO difficulties serve as this, ANTI-NECRO moreso.
• Hard Mode Perks: On Evolved difficulty and above, you can skip straight to Necro Castle. On LOST or ANTI-NECRO difficulty, beating the game nets you the true, yet Bittersweet Ending. ANTI-NECRO difficulty gives you infinite continues right from the start.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: There are five different difficulties, the first three referring to Pokémon evolution. Each has its own description.
  • "Basic" (Easy)^Description For those who have no idea what they're doing. You deal more damage to enemies, enemies deal less damage to you, and some puzzles and stage hazards are simplified. You can only go so far, though.
  • "Standard" (Normal)^Description For those who have a good idea of how action platformers work. It's the default experience, don't expect much else.
  • "Evolved" (Hard)^Description For those who know what they're doing. You deal less damage to enemies, enemies deal more damage to you, and some puzzles and stage hazards and gimmicks are a bit more complicated. You do get a few extra things to mess around with, though.
  • "LOST" (Harder)^Description If you're not prepared, you've already lost. Enemies deal tons of damage to you, yet you do so little to them. You'll need to really think about how to approach certain situations.
  • ANTI-NECRO (Hardest)^Description Only for the elite. If you're not ready, this difficulty will feel unfair. You deal far less damage to enemies. As for them? They can instantly kill you now.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: When playing as either Kelske or Tep, Aesta is the boss for Necro Castle Stage 4. Thankfully, you knock some sense into her, and it's implied whoever you're playing as was trying to go easy on her.
• In Case of Boss Fight, Break Glass: Subverted. While you can still attack the glass cockpit in Necro Castle Stage 1's boss fight, Tetri-Security, it will only deal 1 damage no matter what. Most of the damage during the fight is going to come from either the boss clearing lines, or them topping out, which results in an instant victory. You can get an achievement for dealing most of the damage via hitting the glass though, and a special animation will play if you land the last hit this way.
• It Amused Me: Kelske goes on a rant once The Grand Necromancer's intentions are revealed, and becomes enraged. This works to the player's advantage, as it grants a permanent attack boost for the first phase of the final boss.
• Kid Hero: Played straight if you play as Kelske, subverted otherwise.
• Kid Sidekick: If you choose to play as Tep, Kelske becomes your partner instead of the other way around.
• Lethal Lava Land: Mortal Zone Volcano is exactly what you'd think it is. Guarded by Pigliblaze the Emboar, players must climb the volcano avoiding large chunks of magma, not unlike Mega Man X4's Volcano area.

• Make My Monster Grow: The Grand Necromancer grows to nearly quadruple his usual size for his second phase.
• Mind-Control Eyes: While under the influence of The Grand Necromancer, the zombies, hench-Mon and Aesta all have purple-tinted eyes.
• Numerical Hard:
  • The biggest difference between all difficulties is the amount of damage you do to enemies and vice versa.
  • The only difference between LOST and ANTI-NECRO difficulties? In ANTI-NECRO difficulty, you die in one hit.
• Ominous Floating Castle: Necro Castle is directly above Essenia, serving no real purpose until the second half of the game.
• One-Hit Kill: During the second phase of The Grand Necromancer's fight (the second half of said phase if playing on LOST or ANTI-NECRO difficulties), he can perform Guillotine, which if not properly avoided, will instantly kill your character. On Basic Mode, this only takes half of your max health, but can still be devastating.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Playing on ANTI-NECRO difficulty reduces the player characters to this.
• Open-Ended Boss Battle: It doesn't matter if you win or lose during the Final Boss as Aesta; she will end up as The Grand Necromancer's servant, one way or another.
• Patch Work Map: Essenia features a Green Hill Zone, Lethal Lava Land, Slippy-Slidey Ice World, and a Bubblegloop Swamp all in the same region.
• Sequence Breaking: On Evolved difficulty and above, it is entirely possible to skip straight to Necro Castle without having to defeat any hench-Mon. This, however, also leads to "Phase 0" of The Grand Necromancer's fight, where all of the Hench-Mon's souls are stolen (in GNN-134's case, it steals a TM), resulting in a boss with eight moves, one from each hench-Mon.
• Shout-Out:
  • When you beat GNN-134, it will explode in a very similar manner to a Maverick from the Mega Man Zero series.
  • TRIO in general is a shout out to Mega Man. Kelske's gameplay resembles that of the Classic series, Tep's gameplay resembles the X series, and Aesta's gameplay resembles the Zero/ZX series.
  • The "Vacuum Start" challenge is based on DOOM, where starting a new game or loading a level (either by warping via cheats or restarting after death) is referred to as a "Pistol-Start."
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Snowy Soul Mountains are mountains absolutely covered in snow. Avalanches are common, and it is guarded by Frezella, the Alolan Ninetales.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Grand Necromancer. He is later just referred to as "Necro" by Kelske, though.
• Superboss: Backtracking to Prosper Village after avoiding the Necklace of The Lifebringer the first time around in TRIO lets you fight a very large and very difficult King Mook as a boss.
• Super Mode: Each character has a specific trigger that causes a certain effect, named differently depending on the character. These effects boost one of the character's stats, and last for about a minute or until a different trigger occurs.
  • Kelske becomes "Enraged" after taking multiple hits in quick succession, boosting his defense. Ends early if 3 enemies are defeated.
  • Tep, after performing a combo with at least 6 successive hits, enters "Deep Focus", boosting his attack. Ends early if Tep takes damage by any means.
  • Aesta becomes "Hyperactive" if she dashes into an item, further boosting her speed. Ends early if she stops moving for more than half of a second, making it the easiest to trigger, but the hardest to maintain.
• Theme Naming:
  • The first three difficulties (Basic, Standard and Evolved) are named in reference to Pokémon evolution.
  • Every location in Essenia, including the region itself, contains some synonym of life, contrasting the army of zombies you fight against during the course of TRIO.
• The Stinger: After beating the game as Tep, after the credits:

Tep: See? I told you she's a tough lady, Kel... You are feeling okay, right Aesta?

Aesta: Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Back still kinda hurts, though.

Tep: Oh, I can get some ice for that, if you want.

Aesta: It's fine. I'll probably just end up melting it by accident anyway.

Tep: Alright.

• The Watcher: Arceus serves as this to the player for most of TRIO and SQUADRON.
• Wall Jump: Tep and Aesta can perform this to get around faster, although Aesta's is greater in terms of height gained. Kelske cannot do this, although it's justified by the fact that Kelske lacks the strength and stamina to do so, making him rely on basic platforming skills.
• Warm-Up Boss: TRIO's intro stage boss pits you against a nameless, almost see-through figure. This turns out to be Arceus in projection form, as a test to see if whoever you're playing as is strong enough to take on The Grand Necromancer.
• Wham Line: After beating the final boss on LOST or ANTI-NECRO as Kelske:

GN: [heavy breathing] Alright... fine. You like to play that rough? I'll play real rough. [grabs a nearby scarf]

Kelske: Wh- hey, wait, is that- H-hey! That's my scarf!!

GN: Oh, really now?

---

"I'm sure she's fine, bud. Last time I checked, she's a tough lady."