It also ran like absolute arse sometimes, but that might have just been my laptop.
Surprising, because it runs great on my laptop. Then again, it's a rather new one, even if mid-range specs-wise. Pokemon Uranium, however, despite being much simpler in many ways, runs like shit.
And it's true, the early parts of Reborn feel like fanfiction I'd write in the first year of middle school. The later parts feel like something I'd write in my third year of middle school
![Tongue :P](http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/Smileys/aaron/tongue.gif)
My problem with the storytelling is that there are too many characters, many of which are forgettable or are too similar to other characters (I keep confusing the bug leader and the Salamence girl, both of which are relevant for very long); some having annoying gimmicks (Cain making everything sexual, Fern having no redeemable traits, Terra), some having so little characterization that you forget who they are as soon as they disappear from the screen (every single Meteor member).
Also, out of all 150 characters, half get kidnapped or taken hostage at least twice in the entire game. Everyone also seems to have family issues of some kind. Everyone is either a liability or ends up being a traitor.
If the game wasn't good from the gameplay perspective, the plot would be too much to bear.
Anyway, I got some more leaders down:
While the poison leader is where I began to realize the game wasn't gonna play fair, it was the psychic leader that really felt like CBT except without the sexual thrill. His gimmick was an arena that enforced some convoluted chess-inspired rules. I couldn't remember the rules, and I had no stomping tantrum to flip the board, so I cheesed hard and reduced the levels by 20%. It was still difficult. I restored the levels as soon as I got my hands on a chip.
The dark-type leader was a joke. I just broke the dark crystalline field with Dugtrio's earthquake, but not before abusing it a bit myself.
The fighting leader wasn't fun, as his team was designed to counter everything that normally works well on fighting types - pretty much all his fighting moves were enhanced by the arena, nearly every pokemon had acrobatics that was also empowered, and to add insult to injury, he had poison jab on everything.
I tried to brute force it somehow. I could delete his Conkeldurr with Noivern, melt Lucario with Charizard, but the rest was troublesome. Then I realized something - other than maybe Blaziken, none of his pokemon could take down my Bronzong in one hit. What's more, I had an alolan Golem with sturdy. What do these two pokemon have in common? They learn explosion. It felt dirty, it really did.
The fire leader fight seemed hopeless, but in the end it was just a matter of adjusting my strategy. It was a double battle where the leader lead with Darmanitan and Typhlosion. The trick here was not to allow the Typhlosion to use full-powered eruption before Dugtrio can clear the board with earthquake. Fortunately I had an extremespeed packing Arcanine for that. The next step was to weaken the fire attacks that were empowered by the arena. I didn't intend to fight fire with fire, despite the fact that I brought Arcanine and Emboar to the gym, so I had my Seaking drop a rain dance. I also tried my luck and obliterated Rotom with horn drill. At some point I sent out my Golem to explode, because I don't trust stone edge. I think it was against Charizard?