YMMV / Pokémon Empire

• Alternative Character Interpretation: By necessity, the game is filled with these and leaves the player to draw their own conclusions in the form of relationship variables. You can take Royale to be a group of entitled, culturally backwards nobles who backed a mad king trying to claw their way back into power or the true rulers of the region who truly care about its people. You can see the Council as an uncaring, corporatist tyranny that buries all dissent beneath bureaucracy and red tape or an overworked group of well-meaning people who honestly want to create a better tomorrow. And so on.
• Breather Boss:
  • Overall Chapter 6, but particularly Roland is a cooldown from some of Chapter 5's nastier fights. Despite being the Dragon League Leader and possessing two pseudo-legendaries, Roland has significant trouble countering the powerful Ice and Fairy types you likely now have in abundance outside of his wildcard Empoleon, which isn't particularly difficult to take down. Combine this with a field that's more likely to work against Roland than for him, and this is one of the easier major boss fights so far.
• Broken Base: The sheer amount of dialogue in this game, as well as the not-particularly-subtle parallels to real life political turmoil can either impress players or turn them away.
• Game-Breaker: An astonishing amount, simply due to the sheer number of options the player has access to.
  • Xatu is available as early as Chapter 4 and becomes one of the most potent setup sweepers in the game thanks to Meditate, which has been retooled to increase all stats and Crit Ratio by 1 stage for the cost of half the user's HP. While other Pokemon get Meditate, none are as easily and quickly gotten as Xatu, and not all of them have Magic Bounce and Morning Sun to allow for multiple uses of the move very easily. Very few trainers in this game can even touch Xatu in the hands of a slightly competent player.
  • The Dolorous Dirge, when paired with the right mon like Mandibuzz. The item decreases the turn count of Perish Song and heals the user when used. This pairs nicely with Mandibuzz who knows the move as well as Block, which in addition to its trapping also lowers the target's offensive stats. What truly makes this terrifying is that Perish Song does not affect the user in this game, meaning that it's quite easy to abuse this combo multiple times per fight.
  • While other methods exist, infinite money farming becomes extremely easy as of Chapter 8, especially if one joins the Merchants' Guild. Silver Wind Sake, which can be bought from the casino at 450 Coins (or 380 with the Guild membership) can then be sold for ~2000 Poke. Given it is fairly easy to rack up large amounts of Coins quickly once one gets better at the slots or poker, and you can amass quite a fortune in a short period of time.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Guardian Girafarig looks almost exactly like Raging Bolt.
• Moral Event Horizon: Your brother Vergil unleashing a horde of Tauros to trample and kill Cheyenne.
• Nintendo Hard: All gym leaders and most major boss fights possess a powerful team of 6 Pokémon buffed even further by field effects, items other than Poké Balls are prohibited in battle and set mode is enforced, and it is impossible to level grind past your problems. Even several of the normal trainers, usually pushovers in other Pokemon games, abuse powerful items and strategies to catch you offguard. And this is before considering money is a very limited resource that you'll need to spend a lot of to gain powerful Pokémon, or the incredibly difficult puzzles and non-battle related challenges the game throws your way.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Players willing to take on the monotype challenge (using only Pokémon of a particular type) have quite a bit of freedom in this game. You can build a strong team of 6 Pokémon of any type before the first gym, even from traditionally late-game types like Dragon or Ice. The 9 starters's dual-types cover all 18 types to help with this.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Teltepe's Casino features a poker minigame in addition to the usual slots and Voltorb Flip.
• That One Boss:
  • Rose, the Psychic League Leader, is a major difficulty spike. Nearly her entire team is comprised of fully evolved Pokémon while most of the Pokémon you have at this point are either unevolved, weak, weak to her Psychic moves, or some combo of the three. Rose meanwhile has access to things like Light Clay Mr. Mime abusing Reflect and Light Screen to cut the power of your team's attacks, a bulky Exeggutor that is nearly impossible to kill with it Harvesting its Oran Berry every turn combined with Leech Seed, and a Hitmontop that can easily reverse sweep your team if it's her last Pokémon thanks to its ability Soloist and will smash any Dark types you decided to bring. To top it all off is her monstrously powerful and fast Mismagius that can boost its Special Defense with Mystical Fire before hitting you with field-boosted Hallucinates which work off its already massive Special Defense stat. This is the first fight that demands you learn the game's mechanics or you're going to be here a while.
  • The second fight with Ariella may not seem that bad, given she has only two Pokémon and Alanah is backing you up with a full team of 6...except Ariella brings a level 45 Florges and a level 50 frickin Mega Diancie when your level cap is still 40. Unlike anything else even in the game at this point, the Diancie has a maxed out optimized EV spread and perfect IVs on top of perfect coverage, with the ability Magic Bounce to not only prevent most of the status-based strategies you may want to use against it but also heal off damage each turn. Oh, and did we forget to say Alanah is basically useless during this fight and can barely do anything to either of Ariella's Pokémon? And unlike similar battles from Pokémon Reborn, you're required to win this one to progress the story.
  • Simon is the Rock-type League Leader, which may make him seem deceptively easy due to Rock being an infamously bad type. This is before you get acquainted with his signature move, Pillars of Law - a priority status move that inverts the type chart, fixing Rock's multiple weaknesses, and lessens the power of super-effective hits used against Simon's team while boosting his own super-effective moves. The field for this battle, Primordial Park, is particularly annoying as well, and can randomly give Simon boosts like Treasure Hoard to make his bulky powerhouses even stronger or Magic Coat to deflect status moves from your team, with most of his moves accelerating the rate at which he can obtain these bonuses or slowing down the rate that you obtain yours. To say nothing of his most dangerous Pokémon, a powerful Regirock that's incredibly hard to take down who can dish out immense damage to your team.
• That One Level: Illyria as a whole. It's a massive, flat area with few landmarks that deliberately does not hold the player's hand or ease them in, and also requires finishing multiple unaffiliated requests to proceed. These involve fetch quests, quests that force you to scour the entirety of Illyria, quests that eat away heavily at your hard earned money, and a nasty stealth section. While you don't have to complete all of them, you still do need to the majority and do need all of them done for the mystery egg.
• That One Puzzle: The Body puzzle in the Hashnari qualifies. Imagine Wallace/Juan's gym from the main games on steroids. The player must navigate a massive room of tiles and step on each one only once to turn them from red to blue - the issue comes in the form of the random furniture and Strength boulders lying around that have to be accounted for while routing. And of course, stepping on a tile that has been stepped on forces you to start over from the beginning, meaning one minor mistake even late in the run can cost you. Furthermore, you have to know that you can step on the blue tiles the boulders sit on top of to complete the puzzle, but this isn't intuitive and the only way to know this is an easily missed NPC outside the Hashnari.
  • Another example is the Impresa Puzzle in Itonda. You have to read a passage and place the correctly colored Impresas onto the slots, but it's a fairly obtuse riddle that could potentially be interpreted in a few ways, making it difficult to decipher. Oh, and if you don't have Calyrex, there's a second puzzle you can optionally do. Good luck, you'll need it.