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REVIEW SUMMARY

Pros

• Funny adult humor
• Blobbos is greater than Pikachu
• Good Boss fights
• Great Learnset changes

Cons

• Tedious Post-Game
• Most trainers are underwhelming or unchanged
• High level spike late-game

Pokémon Periwinkle: Special Blobbos Edition does its job well in recreating Pokémon Yellow to be more humorous and more challenging. The challenge, along with it becoming more of a nuance later on in the game, hurt the hack quite a bit. If you find internet meme culture to be interesting and like challenging hacks, this hack might be for you if high level spikes don't scare you into quitting late in the game. Also beware of the bizarre difficulty of this hack with easy trainers and challenging bosses. That alone can harm your experience exponentially if you don't have a solid mentality to deal with it.

Otherwise, this hack is decent.

POKEMON AVAILABILITY: Alright

Periwinkle offers similar variety of Pokémon from the original Yellow version with a few exceptions in some areas. There are even a few fakemons like Tentaquil. Most of these changes, however, are very subtle. For example, say you wanted Tentaquil on your team because you appreciate the novelty or its power. Not only do you have to get through most of the game to get to it, it's also at a measly level 5.

Meltan is also in this game because of its appearance in Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee. You're going to be searching for quite some time in the Power Plant to find one (and also grinding it for Melmetal at Level 53).

Nevertheless, it still has the decent variety of the original while restoring the Pokémon Mansion to resemble Red and Blue more closely (So you won't be seeing any Rattata and Raticate there).

MUSIC: No change

BOSSES: Good

This is one the strong points of the hack. The Gym Leaders and Elite Four will put up a better fight than before while also being reasonable fair. Specifically, they are also given more variety to their team while having the movesets to potentially take out your team. Take Sabrina for example. She's got a team with plenty of potent Psychic types instead of just the Abra evolutionary line.

While they suffer from AI rouletting and other annoyances like switching when they have a low health Pokémon out (Agatha did this a bit during my playthrough), this is sadly the case with most Generation 1 hacks.

TRAINERS: Poor (Minor changes)

This is the second major flaw that the hack brings to the table. It's not the witty stuff they talk about before and after the battle. Rather, it's what they are using. Many of them haven't had a chance to train their Pokémon to be better despite this hack taking place after the original events of Yellow. Sure the People in Victory Road are training harder, but what about the people in places like the Routes near Vermillion City?

Indeed, only some of the trainers got a different party of Pokémon while many of them have the same team. All of the low amount of experience and tiring teams hurt one's enjoyment with these types of hacks.

GRAPHICS: Alright (Minor changes)

Blobbos, Professor Stump, and your rival, among others, look nice and all. But some things either look goofy (The girl you're playing as; she looks like a lanky Red with a mullet and shorts) or purposely done bad (Pikachu and the "Former President").

Not much to say otherwise.

LAYOUT: Alright (few extra areas)

Minus the Battle Tent, there's some new areas after you get access to the "New Postgame Content".

What we are given is simply a devamped Mt. Silver. It's nice for what it is, but being unoriginal and serving little purpose but being a pathway to the true final boss of the game, it feels disappointing after all the work you had to do to get there.

DIFFICULTY: Medium-Easy (Hard Elite Four and Post Game)

The main reason why many people start losing steam in Pokémon games. Since this game doesn't deviate too much from the difficulty outside of the bosses, you might find yourself getting tired of the game despite all of the zesty dialog. Even if you do get though the game and find yourself at the Indigo Plateau, you find out that your team is rather under-leveled due to the underwhelming trainers.

You'll probably have your team around the late 40's while the Elite Four are packing Pokémon in the high 60's and early 70's. Of course it's possible to overcome it with wise item usage or even a good team alone if you have the skill. However, even after you get through the treacherous battles, the game, for reasons unknown, want you to go through it all again a second time to access Mt. Silver. The only difference being a different champion with a different team.

It doesn't stop there. The final boss happens to have all his Pokémon up to level 90 except for his lead at level 100. The Pokémon around the cave have little use but to annoy you since they are at a lower level than the Cerulean Cave. It's this type of nonsense that makes many people stop playing the hack and move onto something else.

POKEMON BALANCE: Alright

Even though the Pokémon stats are unchanged, the level up moveset changes are a huge plus to this hack. It brings higher difficulty across every battle while giving some Pokémon like Machamp a chance to shine with its new wacky signature move Leg Drop. Only main problem is that, while the level up movesets are great, the new signature moves added in this hack are mostly gimmicky. Sure moves like Suck An Egg (Exeggutor evolution line's recovery move), Body Clam (Water-Type Body Slam), and Lard Bard (70 Accuracy sleep move) help a select few Pokémon out, others like Triggered (Psychic type Rage) and Chimp Out (Fighting-Type thrash) are either replaceable later on or are hilariously bad.

Another thing to point out is that Dark and Steel types are in this game. It's a shame that there are only four Steel types (Magnemite and Meltan evolutionary line's) and one Dark type (Mewtwo's deformed replacement). Also, Blobbos, the mascot of this hack, is a slow creature with modest stats (322 BST) and a poor typing in Rock/Ice. So keeping it with you might actually be more of a handicap than having a purpose on your team. At least it gets a powerful Blizzard and good utility moves so it's not as bad as Pikachu without surf.

I'v played this hack twice and the first time I ruined it by over preparing making the challenges and dulling the learning curve that the editors of the rom hack had intended doing them a disservice to their efforts, with that being said on my second play through I can appreciate the difficulty by playing casual and it is perfect for throwing a curve ball at veteran player and posing and challenge to new players with a good spicing of dialog the will wake you up from the old dull dialog you might be use to hearing for the old Yellow Version.

If you want to play a pokemon rom hack but don't want a kaizo experience then this is the rom hack for you, GG!