Pokemon Sienna Review |(GBA Romhack Review!)

Pokemon Sienna, a game that has been in development for over 10 years has finally been completed. It was created by Logan, and finished by hacksrepairman based on there pokecommunity name. Pokemon Sienna takes place in the original region of Voultan with there very own generation of Pokemon! That's right fakemon! There's still the same pokemon from Generation 1-3 added in with the Volutan Pokemon.

Some of you are probably asking, Why should I play this game. Well the biggest factor for me are the volutan pokemon. There is a good number of them to catch, and truthfully I was very impressed by the selection. This includes your starter pokemon which are also fakemon.

These are very well done! You have the fire type Moocano, the water type Pontfant, and Gramet the grass type. I picked Moocano because I just love fire type starters and was very pleased with its evolutions as I was with Pontfants. There are also plenty of fakemon for generally every type of pokemon.

Flying types, water,grass,fire, ghost. You name it! So there is a lot of experimentation available with how to construct your team! Espicially since there are many available early in the game. As I mentioned before this game takes place in Voultan, thus a whole original new map for you to explore.

This is were I am mixed on my opinions of it. The towns and cities stand out pretty well with how they are mapped and can be differentiated from each other. It's the paths between the towns that are a problem, there extremely linear and become very tedious with the types of settings.

It's just generally a fielded hill or a forest every time. These paths generally don't have strong characteristics and feel forgettable. Because the areas are so linear and at times very simple it can be very easily traversed. This becomes emphasized when just looking at the region, it becomes far too linear.

Like the regular pokemon games Pokemon Sienna follows suits with the formula, you are a young boy leaving town after being rejected by the Pokemon Academy and you take on the gym challenge. Your peer from the same town also does the same and thus becomes your rival.

You then run into Team Rocket pretty early in the campaign and stop there plans, you meet up with the infamous Steven from the Hoenn games who tells you the Voultan lore. Voultan has it's own legendary pokemon, and also houses Lugia as well. The lore is that once Lugia and Gralite lock eyes they begin to fight which causes irreparable damage and destruction.

This has happened once in the past almost destroying Voultan, however the legendary urinsum appeared and stopped the fight then disappeared never to be seen again. So Steven tells you that Team Rocket's plan is to catch Lugia and Gralite and have them do battle with each other to force the destruction of Voultan.

This is essentially all the story there is. There is a bit more information given for the story but it doesn't get much deeper then that and feels reminiscent of the events of Pokemon Emerald. I will say the Story isn't a strong factor for needing to play the game.

It's pretty surface level and simple, like the main line games. It can also be convoluted with conflicting information and the sequences of team rocket seem like exact copies from events in Kanto and Hoenn. The game itself has a pretty quick pace to it, it is more on the easier side as you likely won't faint until the Elite Four.

There is a bit of grinding needed at times but there isn't too many instances were you will be facing over-leveled trainers and gym leaders. The Gym Leaders are varied with there typing's and can put up a good fight, however I don't believe any had 5 or 6 pokemon.

However you do get an opportunity to re-battle them with a stronger team which is a great plus! Overall the Gym Challenge was a lot of fun and liked seeing them use a good amount of Voultan pokemon! I have mentioned some critiques I had of the game overall in terms of mapping, story, pace etc.

Now I will be mentioning specific critiques. There are some game design issues that makes it very confusing for the player to understand what and where they should be going. For most towns there are a NPC blocking the exit until you get the right amount of badges.

After beating the Mekong City gym you would think to keep moving up but are still blocked by the NPC. If you talk to the Mekong City leader he tells you the next gym is in Atlantic City which is the first town in the game which is fine, but when you go there you realize you need cut.

This was such a chore to find, it was in Ganges city were the first gym was which is a dead-end location and in a random house with an old man who will give an item to trainers who have two badges. But if you never visited the house on your first trip there how would you know to go there to get an important game item.

There should have been more dialogue and a better way for the player to get cut. Another example of this is when approaching orinoco city, you get a call from the professor telling you that himself and others are being held hostage in the orinoco city tower so you would think that is the next thing for you to do.

But every time you try to get in you are stopped. It turns out you are supposed to get not one, not two but three badges FIRST before being able to enter the tower! How is the player supposed to know this and not waste it's time trying to enter the area were the game told it to go too! This happens again with another team rocket entanglement in the well, you can't reach the rocket base until later in the game.

The game shouldn't be telling the player to go to a place and then tell them they can't enter and tell them what they should be doing in the mean time to progress the game. Very frustrating! Another minor annoyance is that the gym leaders and elite four battles are all regular trainer music instead of gym or unique tracks which was very anti-climatic! There are side-quests, of all which I believe are mandatory to progress the game.

The issue with them is that they are not fleshed out at all. A man asks you to find his glasses which he lost on the top of the route, you can find it within a minute. A man's tauros is missing and asks you to find it, it is literally 10 seconds away from finding and in a very visible spot were you can't miss it.

Take a look at this gym puzzle! One step and your at the leader. This embodies a big issue with the game design, there was interesting ideas that was not expanded upon at all! There is very little between getting to Point A to Point B making it seem meaningless to even have in the first place! So after coming to this point you are going to ask, why should I play this game after some of the critiques you have mentioned.

Well despite all of the short-comings I still had fun playing it, for those who are new to romhacks this will be a fun experience if you strictly play it for the pokemon gameplay of catching new pokemon and training them to beat the gym and elite four challenge.

For the experienced player this game may be forgettable for them, but I do think the aspect of a new region and new pokemon to catch should be very intriguing! Also! Pokemon Sienna has a fantastic post-game, finishing the game's story, new areas to explore, and great challenges as there is an area identical to pokemon frontier and you can even explore the orange islands albeit limited to two islands.

If your looking for a easy going experience identical to the style of main-line games then you will enjoy Pokemon Sienna! I will be doing another video on Pokemon Sienna doing spoiler specific dissections of game designs for those who have played the game looking to give a full discussion of the game and for those who do not mind spoilers and want a fuller picture of what to expect from the game.