Poke-Con. That’s what they call the big event in Con-Quest, and honestly it’s a name that sounds like a bootleg t-shirt you’d find in a dark corner of a convention hall. The whole game has that energy. Deliberately rough around the edges, like a cosplayer who spent way too long on the cleavage window and forgot to hem the skirt. You play as some guy who just shows up, and the central loop is running quests for girls dressed as Pokemon. The Bulbasaur cosplayer is new in this version, and her story quest has you doing something with vines. I won’t spoil it, but the animation that unlocks later isn’t exactly subtle about where the vines end up.

Combat is where things get weirdly fascinating. It’s a turn based RPG with spells like Lightning Storm and Mothswarm. I spent an embarrassing amount of time abusing Lightning Storm because the stun chance was busted, and I see the patch notes now say they lowered it. Good. I was almost untouchable. But then I got a saved girl as a summon in a fight after finishing her hidden quest. You finish a hidden quest, which by the way are hidden so well I found one by accident while trying to clip through a wall, and suddenly during a random battle a topless character portrait flashes on screen and she casts a spell. It’s jarring in the best way. The shop room used to lag like hell, and I’d just sit there waiting for the gashapon machine to spit out another sticker while some random cutscene triggered. The RNG on that machine is a cruel mistress now, they say it properly reflects rarity, which just means I’m getting even more common stickers. I never did get the animated reward images. I know they’re in there. The patch notes taunt me.

The writing has this strange, almost broken charm. Dialogue skips if you click too fast, they fixed that apparently, but I kind of liked the jumbled text. It felt like the game was as flustered as I was. The whole thing is a parody of something we all know, but it’s too busy shoving its hand down its own pants to care about being clever. And yet, I keep going back to see if the Pikachu cosplayer’s second hidden quest will finally trigger. I think my save file is corrupted. It probably isn’t. This game just makes you doubt everything.