Being born in 1994, I grew up alongside the Pokémon craze of the late ’90s. My first one was Pokémon Yellow for the Game Boy Color, and my favorite of all time is Pokémon Crystal (second-gen, best-gen), with Dunsparce being my number-one ‘Mon.
Coromon is a throwback to the early days of Pokémon, and the ability to bring it on the go (via my Nintendo Switch) takes me back to the days of running around with my Game Boy Advance SP. Thanks to Freedom Games, I was generously gifted a review code to do just that!
While Half-Glass Gaming’s owner Josh reviewed the game on PC, my first experience with Coromon was on the Switch. Thus, I have a few things to say about the game itself before I talk about how it plays on the Switch specifically.
For the past week or so, I’ve been putting time into Coromon, working my way through the impressively large and in-depth story. The monster sprites are generally beautiful — one of my favorites is Mooby, which I named Why god¿ (yes, the upside-down question mark was intentional).
The world is large and detailed, with multiple different sprites for similar objects, such as varying tree and foliage types, so that it doesn’t feel too repetitive. I do want to say that I’m not a fan of the character sprites themselves; their heads are too tall to me. However, character creation is really deep, so I shouldn’t complain too much about that…
The accessibility features for Coromon are stunning, with options on top of options on top of options for tuning the game’s difficulty to match your skill level. You can even toggle on the ability to capture and steal other trainers’ Coromon — something that’s heavily frowned upon in other ‘Mon-catching games.
One of coolest features, in my opinion, is the Potential system, which is Coromon’s revamp of Pokémon’s EV/IV system. With the Potential system, you have essentially a secondary experience bar. The higher your Cormon’s Potential level (1-21), the faster that second bar levels up. When it fills, you then have the ability to put 3 points into a specific stat, allowing you to hyperfocus what you want your ‘Mon to specialize in, instead of just hoping you catch one with the right levels to grow into what you need.
This customization ability is fantastic for people who don’t want to get into the breeding elements of the game and still get competitive creatures (which is good, because Coromon doesn’t have breeding at all).
Now, on to the Switch!
The game plays great on the Switch; load and save times are generally very short (I did have one save about 6 hours into the game that took over two minutes for some reason, but that only happened once). The game is playable with both a controller or via the touchscreen if your controllers are dead.
The game is presented in a pixel-art style, so there is no drop in quality or stability when you dock the Switch or play in handheld mode.
I did notice that if you don’t play the game for a few seconds after a new screen loads, it puts a pause button in the corner of the screen. While that pause button is there, the joysticks don’t do anything and you have to use the D-pad or touchscreen to move before the game will continue again. If you touch the pause button with your finger, it will open the game menu.
So with all that said, Coromon itself is fantastic, and the Switch port is also top-notch. If you dig Pokémon-esque games with a giant story and a whole bunch of unique ideas, get Coromon. You wont regret it.
Disclaimer: I mentioned this already, but I was given a review code for Coromon for Nintendo Switch. The opinions expressed in this article are my own.
