YMMV / Pokémon Uranium

• Anticlimax Boss:
  • Seikamater is given a lot of hype up towards the final confrontation with her at Anthehell, and she vastly outlevels you, being at 45^note unless you traded something over, you are most definitely no higher than mid ~30 at this stage of the game, even with grinding... however her she only has Attack Order (which can be very easily walled) and Night Shade (which deals fixed damage equal to the user's level, so 45 in this case) as attacking moves. At best its an annoyingly long fight due to her other moves being Defend and Heal Order, but she poses very little threat unless your entire team is weak to bug-type. Its worth noting that she gets a bunch of extremely fearsome elemental moves just a few levels over, so giving her an underwhelming moveset at the specific level where you fight her was probably a deliverate decision to make sure the player isn't stuck against an immensively powerful legendary pokemon that sharply outlevels them.
  • While Gamma Urayne is That One Boss for some, it is still only one Pokémon, and Pokémon's battle system is not kind to powerful single Pokémon. There are so many Percent Damage Attacks available to you at that point that it's still possible to win regardless of how underleveled you are — cheesing the fight with Toxic and revival spam is, just like in the main games, a very viable option. Heck, a lucky Fissure or Sheer Cold can end the fight instantly — though you'll probably need a Pokémon with Sturdy or a Focus Sash to survive the first hit. This LP just puts Hazma in the front line and lets Gamma Urayne burn all its PP before Struggling itself to death.
• Awesome Music:
  • Nuclear Power Plant Zeta. A slow-paced techno theme that plays during the pre-game backstory of the Player Character and later when you're exploring the failed plants.
  • Battle! Vs. Wild Nuclear Pokemon. A rock remix of the usual encounter theme that plays during wild Nuclear encounters.
  • The Battle! Vs. Gym Leader Theme is a fast-paced and intense piece that sets the stage perfectly for the game's gym battles, while the theme that plays as the Gym Leader's on their last Pokémon is an exciting remix of Pokémon's main theme that amps the pace up even further to make it clear that victory is within your reach.
  • Snowbank Town. A calm, almost caring theme, that makes it seem like everything is and will be okay. A safe haven within the snowy mountains, complete with snow softly falling, compared to the harsh weather out on Route 16.
    From the description of the Video:
    "After a rigorous trek through the mountains, you’ve finally reached your destination. Here in Snowbank Town, all is quiet as the snow falls gently around you, and you begin looking for a place to stay the night..."
  • Battle! Vs Apocalypse CURIE (a repurposed custom Magearna battle theme by one of the game's composers) is a heavy-hitting techno-rich theme that conveys amazingly well the danger posed to the player and the world by CURIE and Urayne. There's even a version with lyrics made by Juno Songs.
• Base-Breaking Character: Most of the Fakemon qualify, as with most uses of the Sailor Earth trope. Some think a lot of them actually look pretty good and can pass for official Pokémon. Others think they all look ridiculous, to too fantastical, or stray too far from the design style of main-line Pokémon species to be even remotely close to official Pokémon design.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Rosalind's backstory involves a part of the Pokémon world that didn't allow women to perform on the stage. There is absolutely no explanation as to why part of the egalitarian-to-a-fault Pokémon world is randomly sexist, and it has no impact at all on Rosalind as a character.
• Breather Boss: Gym Leader Tiko, due to being the first gym leader since Maria to have a uniform type among his party; just bring a Water or Rock type (the latter in particular, since three of his Pokémon have a 4x weakness to it) and you've pretty much won.
• Broken Base: Does the game do a good job of telling a darker story while still remaining in tone with the Pokémon world? Is the use of nuclear power plants blended decently into the world or a massive case of Narm? Is the Nuclear type a cool and interesting new type, or a Narmy, poorly balanced, and less interesting attempt at following the success of Shadow Pokémon? Exactly how is the quality of the game itself? Near in line with the base Pokémon games, or way too glitchy with a horrendous level curve to be considered of good quality? Needless to say, opinions of the game are all over the place.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Even if a person's playing casually, it's common to see or hear people picking up a Barewl for their final team. Its final evolution, Gararewl, is the only pure Steel-type in the game; this makes it the only Pokémon in the entire game that flat-out resists Nuclear-type attacks. This helps makes the game's Final Boss more manageable, since its stats makes it a fantastic Stone Wall to Toxic stall it out, on top of potentially having an ability that can allow it to PP stall the final boss's Overheat.
  • Nucleon is also a fairly common choice. Being the first Nuclear-type that doesn't have the downside of disobeying the trainer, its ability giving it access to the most powerful nuclear attack that doesn't have a downside and extremely fast and powerful, Nucleon makes up for East Tandor's rather high level curve and helps cut down on grinding significantly.
• Creepy Cute:
  • Nucleon is a very downplayed example, as it comes very close to being conventionally cute. Holding close to the usual Eeveelution design pattern, it is by far the most innocuous-looking Nuclear type, and the fact that Eevee's personality wasn't affected in the same way as the corrupted Nuclears is driven home by the fact that its animated sprite appears to be trying to affectionately nuzzle something. However, its extra eye and radioactive green color scheme push it into this territory. The fact the appendage on its chest looks like both the universal "radiation hazard" warning symbol and a dapper little bowtie is also something that straddles the creepy/cute line.
  • Hazma's "gas mask" can be unsettling, but it's a two-and-a-half foot dinosaur with nubby legs wearing a little hazmat suit, and the highlights of the "mask's" eyes can give the appearance of Puppy-Dog Eyes. Granted, there's an unused sprite that gives Hazma tentacle arms◊ which is decidedly less cute; it appears exactly once in the game proper, in a late game area where Hazma are being used to clean Nuclear types so they're no longer hostile and disobedient, but that same area has a normal Hazma you can talk to with the Pokémon Speech Translator that says "Happy! Happy to help!" when you do, winning back the cute points the tentacles lost.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A celebrity having to deal with a Stalker with a Crush isn't funny. Said stalker being the only way you can challenge the first gym leader because he gives you a copy of her house keys, leading to a jab at how the main character of any Pokémon game can seemingly barge into people's houses at random with zero consequence, topped by the fact that the whole thing is just out of the left field even for a Darker and Edgier fan game? Now it's funny.
• Difficulty Spike: The level jump between East Tandor and what came before is rather extreme. Even if you go out of your way to grind, it's not uncommon to see random trainers with Pokémon five-nine levels higher than what players would likely be at that point. It isn't until one gets to and completes the ninja reunion sidequest that it finally starts to even out, if only because the player then finally has a better way to control the EVs of their Pokémon and a reliable grinding spot for both money and levels.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Dunseraph is easily one of the most popular Fakemon of the game. Reasons include being a much-needed evolution to the otherwise mediocre Dunsparce, changing types from Normal to Dragon/Flying, good stats and movepool, and a beautiful design that is both majestic while at the same time retaining Dunsparce's dopey charm.
• Fanfic Fuel: Will Lucille ever awaken from her coma? If she does, will she remember everything or not? And would she still be insane or not? Might be addressed as more post-game content is added, but for now it's not hard to wonder.
• Game-Breaker:
  • A fast and powerful Nuclear-type can pretty much sweep through most of the game, due to Nuclear being super-effective against everything else except Steel. The idea behind them is the type is supposed to be a Glass Cannon; they deal super-effective damage on every type except Nuclear and Steel, but in turn are also x2 weak to every type except Nuclear. However, this also means that on any Pokémon with dual typing, nuclear moves are always x4 super-effective on them. Combined with the fact that only Nuclear-types can learn Nuclear moves (outside of Natural Gift while holding the Halfli Berry, a new berry that reduces the power of Nuclear moves to half), means Nuclear-types can always hit any dual-type with a x4 STAB move, basically allowing them to one-shot mons six or so levels higher than their own with ease.
  • Most Nuclear-types you can obtain are balanced by the fact that they're disobedient, but there's one Nuclear-type you can obtain fairly early that lacks this problem: Nucleon. Its Speed is high enough for it to outspeed almost everything in the game, and you can give it a Choice Scarf (which can actually be purchased late in the game) to eliminate the "almost". Its Special Attack is quite high, and its signature Atomizate Hyper Voice is the most powerful Nuclear move in the game that does not have a drawback. Compare with Proton Beam, which has a 10% chance to miss, only has 100 base power (less than Hyper Voice after the Atomizate boost), and harshly reduces Special Attack. (And even then, Hyper Beam is still a viable option, since you're basically shooting out a death ray that will wipe out anything that is not Blissey or a Nuclear or Steel type, and that one's really rare in trainer teams. If you have the battle style on Switch, there's no need for a recharge turn at all.) Basically Nucleon's only weakness is its incredibly shallow movepool, which makes it difficult to check Steel-types unless you're lucky enough to get one with a Fighting-, Ground-, or Fire-type Hidden Power (which is actually easier to do in this game than the main series, due to you being shown what IVs you have and HP's type being determined by which IVs are odd or even, rather than the exact numbers).
  • Inflagetah, especially Mega Inflagetah, can be one of those. Not only does it have ridiculous Speed, but its ability essentially provides STAB on priority moves. This means it gets a STAB Extreme Speed and double STAB Flame Impact. It learns the powerful Flare Blitz as a Flager, just in case it needs an even harder-hitting move. When it Mega Evolves, it has a monstrous 145 base attack, and you can teach it the TM Swords Dance to boost it even further. The result is an abomination that is virtually guaranteed to move first, and the enemy's chances of living past one turn are not too good.
  • Eletux is the only one of the three starters to not have a 4x weakness to one of the others. Eletruxo has the highest base stat total of all three fully evolved starters. Very few things in the game resist both Electric and Water, and by the time the things that do become common, you can have Ice Beam to deal with them. Its Mega Evolution gets Drizzle, which automatically causes it to start raining, boosting Water type attacks by 1.5 (on top of the STAB multiplier, so the total power is more than doubled before factoring in type matchups) and making Thunder an Always Accurate Attack. The game tries to balance it by giving Theo a starter that's part Ground type and much faster, but Eletruxo's base Hit Points (95) and Special Defense (105) make it very likely that it can tank at least one Earth Power unless he gets lucky with a crit, giving you time to one-shot with Surf, or even set up Magnet Rise if you want to be safe. Even Solarbeam won't pose as much of a threat as you'd think — since Eletruxo's slower, it will Mega-Evolve after Archilles does, meaning Drizzle will override Drought, returning Solarbeam's recharge turn and cutting its power in half.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Urayne's three forms are named after the three main forms of radiation — Alpha particles, Beta particles, and Gamma rays, in matching order of strength/danger to boot.
  • Lanthan and Actan are named for the Lanthanide and Actanide series of elements, respectively. The Lanthanide series is also called the "Rare Earth Elements"; fitting Lanthan's designation as the "Rare Earth Pokémon". The Actanide series contains most radioactive elements, including Uranium; fitting Actan's lore of having taught humans how to use radioactive metals.
• Goddamn Bats: Tonemy wouldn't be a Zubat Expy if it didn't adhere to this trope. Zubat's biggest annoyance was Supersonic, which caused confusion, which could at least be cured by switching or fleeing. Tonemy one-ups that with Poison Gas, since poison has to be healed with an item or Pokémon Center. A sign in the cavern where you first encounter them outright tells you to bring plenty of Antidotes. Thankfully for Nuzlockers, the game uses Gen IV poison mechanics (outside of battle, the poison will fade once the afflicted Pokémon hits 1 HP) by default, unless you activate Custom Mode and tell it otherwise.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In 1.0, it's possible to permanently keep Nuclear Actan after catching it, and still be able to get regular Actan later on. Later patches fixed the bug, but don't take Nuclear Actan away from those who caught it, and some players of later versions can still get lucky enough to catch and keep it.
  • In versions prior to 1.2, looking at an egg in the PC will tell you whether or not it will hatch into a shiny. It doesn't make the actual process of shiny hunting any easier, but it saves a lot of time since you don't need to hatch the eggs.
  • If you're lucky, an opponent will just flat out skip their turn. The main culprits seem to be Maria's Feleng (if you send out a Pokémon with Insomnia or Vital Spirit — the AI will keep telling it to use Yawn even though it's ineffective, but there won't be any text indicating this for some reason) and Theo's Spritzee (if you chose Raptorch as your starter — for whatever reason, it's not coded with any moves but it won't use Struggle).
  • Pickup is flat-out broken in this game. It's supposed to have the same rate of triggering as the main series (10%), and the same rarity/item chart as Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver, just with some items switched (berries for evolution stones, Nuclear Balls for Iron Balls, and Leftovers, Max Revives, and PP Ups in place of TMs). Instead, not only do you get an item after every battle that doesn't end in a capture, you can get Rare Candies pretty much as soon as you get Pickup Chyinmunk on the first route if you're lucky (you're not supposed to be able to Pickup Rare Candies until level 81).
  • You can set Autosave to every X minutes, but the truth is that it will only trigger on a map transition if at least X minutes have passed since the last save. This is to prevent glitches caused by Autosaves happening during scripted cutscenes. However, a quirk of the last cutscene of the story overrides this: As the cutscene shifts between the Nuclear Plant Epsilon flashback and the present day at the Championship Site, each shift counts as a map transition. If you set your Autosave for 5 minutes and idle at one point long enough, the game will Autosave during the next shift. Since Urayne isn't Shiny-Locked, this can be used to soft-reset for a shiny Urayne, which would otherwise require you to go through the Gamma Urayne fight each time.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Talking to the people of Vinoville is a lot harder on your second playthrough, now that you know what's going to happen to the town.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Has its own page.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Orchynx tends to be disliked due to being the only one of the three starters that doesn't start with a STAB move, as well as the only one of the three without a contact-activated status ability (Raptorch and Eletux get Flame Body, which burns, and Static, which paralyzes, respectively; Orchynx gets Battle Armor, which prevents criticals). While its ability can seem ideal for Nuzlocke Mode, it isn't uncommon for Eletux's Static to screw you over; if the Random Number God isn't feeling generous, your Nuzlocke challenge can end before it even starts. Plus, earlier versions didn't have Metalynx change its ability upon Mega Evolving — the only one of the three to not do so. Finally, you get two powerful grass types — Garlikid and the Nupin line — handed to you during the game, making the Orchynx line seem redundant. Its only advantage over the other two starters is that it's the only one not weak to Nuclear type moves due to being part Steel, and even that falls flat considering that, before you even make it to the first gym, you can pick up a Pokémon that evolves into a pure Steel type. Later versions tried to salvage it, first by giving Mega Metalynx Heatproof as its ability (halves its fire weakness, which still pales in comparison with Mega Archilles' Drought and Mega Electruxo's Drizzle), and letting Orchynx start with Leech Seed (slowly saps the opponent's HP and heals your own — ideal for getting around the Static issue).
• Nightmare Fuel: Considering this is a fangame that lacks the main series's age restrictions, it gets away with a lot of this.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • You can't use repels in areas infested with Nuclear Pokémon. While this makes sense from an in-universe perspective — emphasizing how abnormal these Pokémon are — and they're not that hard to deal with regardless (Nuclear being weak to almost everything means that most Nuclear Pokémon have at least one 4x weakness to exploit for a OHKO), it doesn't take long for the encounters to get annoying. At least the music for encountering them is good.
  • Despite the devs adding Mega-Evolution, showing that they weren't above using features from games later than Uranium's planning began^note The claim that it had been worked on for nine years upon its release meant that development began around Gen 4, the Exp. Share still works the same as it did pre-Gen 6.^note Between Gen 2 and Gen 5, the Exp. Share was given to one Pokémon, and that Pokémon would get half of the experience from a battle. From Gen 6 onward, the Exp. Share was a key item that, when turned on, would give the Pokémon that battled the full amount of Exp. and everyone else in the party half. Some believe that such a change would go a long way towards resolving the Difficulty Spike in the second half of the game, since level grinding to keep up would be far easier.
  • More like Scrappy Lack of a Mechanic, but for a long time there wasn't any way to check your Pokémon's happiness in the game itself. Thankfully fixed in the 1.2.6 update, which added a NPC in Burole Town that will tell you your Pokemon's happiness level.
  • The Ninjas seem to like switching their Pokémon in and out a lot if you don't manage to OHKO them. If you're using them to switch-train^note Put a weak Pokémon up front so it gets sent out and therefore still gets some EXP, then switch it with a Pokémon that can actually fight. Rinse and repeat., this causes problems as the game won't remember that the weaker Pokémon was in battle before once the Ninja's Pokémon gets sent back out, depriving it of EXP. While you can get around this with the EXP Share, this can't be used in conjunction with the Lucky Egg, making grinding a weaker team member slower that it would be.
  • You can't get the Sprinklelotad until after beating the final boss. This makes gathering berries a massive chore. This is particularly bad as one Uranium-exclusive type of berry reduces Nuclear damage, meaning it would be a key means of countering Nuclear's advantages... except it's nearly impossible to get a decent supply because the watering can is in the post-game. Thankfully changed in the 1.2.6 update, which changed it so you can get the Sprinklelotad after obtaining four badges.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Game Corner (or Casino as it's called in-game) contains both the classic slot machines and Voltorb Flip, along with offering some Pokémon as prizes that won't be available as normal captures until much later in the game. The latter point goes double in Nuzlocke Mode, as this might be the only place you can get most of what they're offering unless the RNG is nice to you with encounter rates.
• That One Boss:
  • Sheldon's Tracton can send Whitney's Miltank crying home for mommy. This thing is fast, gets faster every turn, can use Shift Gear to go even faster and hit even harder — and it hits really hard to begin with. Its typing, Steel/Dragon, has very few weaknesses, and you're not likely at that point to have something that can knock it out in one turn before it can really snowball into an unstoppable death machine.
  • During the Tandor League, one of your opponents will be one of the first seven Gym Leaders chosen at random, with a severely buffed team, including a Pokemon that can Mega Evolve. Pray to Aotius and Mutios above that said Leader isn't Tiko: while his first three mons aren't that hard to deal with (Firoke, Pajay and Archilles), the other three are a nightmare: first, a Chimaconda with Contrary, Overheat as its single move, and a Choice Scarf, meaning that it will always move first, hit you with a powerful move that will raise its Special Attack by two stages. Needless to say, this Chimaconda can easily sweep your entire team. Then, there's a Beliaddon, a pseudo-legendary Pokemon. And lastly, his ace, a Mega Inflagetah, which has a monstrous 145 Attack (that can raise it further with Sword Dance) which will always hit you first with brutal Flame Impacts and Extreme Speed, boosted by its Acceleration ability.
  • Gamma Urayne is insane even by Final Boss standards, primarily since the mechanics of the Champion's League seem tailor-made to make sure the player is woefully unprepared — since your team's fully healed between fights, and you can't heal during fights, why waste money stocking up on healing items? Think you're in the clear because you let Actan join your team? Gamma Urayne is five levels higher, much faster, and packs Overheat, so Actan will be wasted on its first turn. The Nuclear type's main weakness of taking 2x damage to anything is negated by its Chernobyl ability. Think Actan's Intimidate and the Special Attack loss from Overheat will at least spare the rest of your team from One Hit Kills? Nuclear is super effective against everything too, and being left with base 65 Attack and 77 Special Attack isn't too much of a hindrance when the Nuclear attacks it has have at least 100 base power and are guaranteed to do double if not quadruple damage on anything that isn't Steel or Nuclear type while still having 132 base speed, meaning unless you have Sturdy, have Focus Sashes, get lucky with a Quick Claw, or massively overleveled your team for the Championship, have fun getting an attack in. It's no slouch in the defense department either — its base HP and Defenses are 122/116/104 — you will need more than one lucky strike to KO it. Aotius help you if you're in Nuzlocke Mode, locking you out of the revival spam option. What's worse, if you lose against Urayne, it doesn't just send you to the last Pokémon Center, but it instead gives you a Non-Standard Game Over, so have fun doing the Elite Four again. If you're unlucky, and you saved right before fighting it, and it turns out your team isn't prepared to handle a sweeper on Urayne's level, you might just be stuck, and have to restart.
  • Really, a lot of trainers can be like this. Because of a grievous issue with fan-made mons offering severely lowered exp compared to any official mon, the player will need to grind a severe amount just to keep up with the standard trainers' levels. Combine this with the hack's penchant in providing every fan-made 'mon with moves that cover their type weaknesses, it can result in road blocks from a random trainer. This can happen almost any time (so saving before each trainer fight is wise), but is more prone to happening on the routes leading to the 7th Gym and beyond, as it is at that point when enemies' levels start to go through rather arbitrary spikes compared to the more even level-pacing before that point.
• That One Level: East Tandor as whole counts, if only because the level curve goes completely flying out the window once you first set foot there. By the time you get access to Surf and can finally start traveling there, even if you've been going out of your way to encounter every trainer possible, your Pokémon should be at around level 35 overall, in around the same area of the trainers you've been facing so far. Your first clue things are about to go off the rails? When you get into a surprise double battle with the opponents having level 42+ Pokémon and it doesn't let up from there. Even if you go out of your way to level grind on the wild Pokémon in the area, the levels continue to escalate from there, to the point that by the time you make it to the Ice/Dragon Gym^note which hosts a rather nasty Game-Breaking Bug which throws the script of the gym out of whack should you white out in there or attempt to leave, rendering the entire game unwinnable at the point on, you can expect to be facing Pokémon with levels at 50+ while yours will likely still be in the lower 40s. It isn't until the player gets to Tsukinami village and completes the ninja reunion sidequest that the level curve starts getting back under control, if only because the player finally has access to a reliable grinding spot at that point.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • One of the new moves Uranium introduced is Flame Impact, a 65 power physical Fire-type move with +2 priority. It sounds like a perfect move for Flareon, which would allow it to take advantage of its huge 130 Attack and ignore its cripplingly low speed, right? Except Flareon can't learn it by any means. To add insult to the injury, the only two Pokemon that can learn it are Archilles and Inflagetah, two mons with huge Speed, which won't make much use of priority.
  • Frikitiki seems perfect for Tiko; it matches his gym theme, it's pre-evo is in the route right next door to Tiko's home town, and it would make it so you can't just sweep him with a rock or water type Pokémon without problems. Alas, you don't even see it his Championship Team, let alone the Gym Battle.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The entire setup with Larkspur. The main character learns vital information that answers multiple questions about what happened to their mother and that ties Larkspur into the game's main plot... but the sidequest exists solely to give you Garlikid, so all that actually changes is three or four lines of dialogue.

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