Review for A Trainer's Journey

A Trainer's Journey

(#) facia 2007-04-08

Um...this is okay, not bad by any stretch, but nothing really stands out either. It's kind of typical, very close to novelizing the game with the difference of a wider moveset for pokemon, and kinda dialogue-heavy too. In the first couple chapters it seemed like you were to avoid using the word said too much. That got better in later chapters, but you still do stuff that's a little off, like using smiled all the time (it's noticeable, at least to me, plus...you really can't smile dialogue. You can say stuff and then smile, or vise versa, but it's not a speaking verb). And this is really minor but, your battles feel kind of unbalanced. Like Charmander knowing all sorts of attack moves, including dig, yet it goes up against a sandshrew that can only scratch? And being able to beat rockets easy without any problem (or worry). It feels like the game way you just tear through people, which is sorta canon I guess, but makes for weird storytelling. I'm not sure what I think about her going the catch-them-all-route, either...It is different than a lot of fanfic, but it has that same game bit feeling. The pokemon you have are pretty, well, present, I'm not quite sure how to put it, but you've made sure to keep them in the scenes and interact a bit rather than overfocusing on the humans, which is nice. They don't have much personality, though...I mean, they do stuff and react, but it's not quite character like knowing what they're thinking or how they're different from each other...I guess it's kind of hard without speech or really weird noticeable behavior to get across stuff like motivation and reasoning.