[Prologue]

Hello, hello! I’ve had my eye on your fic for a while, so I’m happy to say that I finally found the time to review it! I hope you like it :)

So it opens up with the personality quiz that PMD games and fanfics are so well known for. Nothing bad about it; putting your own spin on these personality quizzes may lead to some interesting revelation down the line, or reveal something about the MC himself if handled right.

Right off the bat, I like how the “personality quiz” void is described here. It gives the vibe of being a space of ethereal nothingness when Jacob’s floating there. Just like in the games, where players finds themselves in that space with peaceful music playing from the speakers, they’re given this feeling of tranquility. You, as a writer, don’t have the benefit of mood-setting music to help set readers at ease, so relying on creative descriptives worked pretty well in this situation. Props to you for that!

I’m also interested in the Voice present in this void. The way you described it makes me immediately think of a Mew: usually depicted as a very old (if not one of the first) original pokémon with the temperament of a child. It could be someone else, or it could be not important down the line. Who knows! I can’t wait to find out :)

One thing I do wanna nitpick about is how the questions were handled here. It’s fine in that you don’t have to change it unless you really want to do it, but I do have to admit that it’s a bit too by-the-books. There isn’t much of a creative spin put into the questions, it’s just presented to Jacob straight-laced. Again, it isn’t a really bad thing, I just personally felt like it could’ve been changed up a bit to have some form of uniqueness inserted into the “personality quiz” section.

Interesting that the human-to-pokémon transformation is shown instead of being done off-screen. Not that I mind though; I always found transformation scenes interesting to read.

Overall, I liked this chapter a lot! It’s pretty faithful to the original quizzes from the games, but the description of the environment brought it to life in a different way than the games did, which I liked. Could have been a bit more different, but not bad for a first chapter.

[Chapter 1]
And now we arrive at the wake up scene! I’ll point out stuff that I liked/found interesting before getting into my overall thoughts:

-/ So the “hero and partner” duo is comprised of Pokémon from the eeveelution family? To be honest, I hardly see that happen, so I’m eager to see how this dynamic plays out.

-/ Heh, I like that she had to splash water to wake him up instead of just waiting.

-/ She met a pokémon with a yellow head? Huh, that’s either a legendary or a regular pokémon, but I can’t really guess at the moment.

-/ So Jacob’s supposed to be an older guy stuck in a kid’s body, huh? Not unheard of, but also not really seen in PMD fics. Could potentially lead to some interesting conflicts with himself and others, so interested to see how that would play out.

-/ I like the little details of how Silver’s ribbons and Jacob’s ears react according to their emotions, it’s super cute :3

-/ So apparently PMD natives use English if Jacob’s able to read the signs there. I personally find that an odd choice, although that might be just my bias for pokémon having their own language shining through, haha. Still, nothing wrong with it at all!

And that’s about it for my specific thoughts! As for my general ones, I overall liked this chapter as an introduction of the PMD world to Jacob. I like some of the little bits of worldbuilding done here, such as the dangerous areas having signs to warn people, as well as there apparently being a legal and illegal way of using Mega Evolution. And it makes sense, given how PSMD has set the precedence or Mega Evolution being very dangerous! I’m sure there would be some sort of enforcement for it, and I’m excited to see just how they exactly enforce it here.

The biggest bit of worldbuilding/plot point here would have to be how pokémon apparently don’t like humans, though. And that the PMD world coexists with the human one (at least, going by Silver’s claim that nearly everyone met a human at least once)! I’ve never seen anything like this before — the PMD world is usually an alternate reality all on its own — and what it could mean for the story’s direction is rather intriguing.

I also adore the description of the different places shown off, which are the beach and Paradise Square. I could feel the contrast of the beach’s cold, unwelcoming feeling and the square’s homely warmth, and I think it’s helped by Silver’s dialogue and the wooden signs concerning those places. I hope this keeps up; it makes for an enjoyable read!

I do have some nitpicks, however. While the story and pacing are fine as is, some parts of the narration do drag a bit. Just extraneous tidbits like [whereas with the voice in the void he couldn't place the gender either way] and [as opposed to the void previously] aren’t really driving the narrative forward in a meaningful way. Yes, Jacob got shoved into yet another unfamiliar area, but you don’t need to constantly bringing up last chapter’s events as comparison for the strangeness. Once or twice is just fine. Plus, there are some sections that will better benefit from the rule of “show and don’t tell”, such as this line:

[At this rate, it would get Jacob and Silver roped into the mess with them if they didn't leave now.]

It was already implied that the pokémon were about to fight in the two previous lines, and the next paragraph has Silver explicitly pulling Jacob away because of the lack of safety, so it makes the line I quoted above unnecessary.

Plus, while I’m not sure whether it’s grammatically correct or incorrect, having multiple dialogue tags in a single paragraph (which happened multiple times) makes the story as a whole look cluttered. I personally suggest keeping it to one dialogue tag per paragraph.

I don’t have much to say when it comes to the characters yet. Both seem to be the standard hero/partner duo from the games, albeit the partner has an unusual backstory. But personality-wise, I’m not getting much of anything besides Jacob’s tendency to worry too much and Silver’s motor mouth. But this is the second chapter, so I don’t expect much to be shown yet without bloating up the chapter size.

Now, for errors that I’ve noticed:

[... wingul...]

Misspelled “wingull”. Also, since you’ve taken the trouble to capitalise pokémon names, I think you missed this one.

[... as it them passed by...]

Something’s off with this section (the one where the Lampent lights up lamp posts).

[... a mega Houndoom.]

I normally wouldn’t have pointed this out, but since you’ve capitalised every pokémon term including Mega Evolution, this one should be capitalised too.

[... she shouted, striking a vaguely adventuresome pose, followed by awkward silence.]

[... she admits sheepishly before continuing on.]

Here was when I started to notice that your dialogue tags were transitioning into present tense when the rest of the story was in past tense. The lines I quoted above were side by side, which made it all the more noticeable. I suggest editing the dialogue tags back to past tense.

[... most of the Pokémon on this island can't tolerate humans, let alone having their lives ruined once again by...]

“Having” should be “have”.

That’s about it, I think. Overall, I liked this chapter! It’s a rather succinct introduction of both who I’m assuming is the partner and the town, and there’s enough told to give readers a picture of what there is in this world. Of course, there isn’t much going on plot-wise, and I’m not sure what to think of the characters yet, but I expect it should pick up in the next chapter. Until then, keep up the good work!

Alright, here we go.

Silver feels a little strange to me. I get the feeling she's acting so radical with Jacob because of something traumatic like losing someone, but that's just a prediction. I feel like there's definitely more to her, so I won't say her characterization feels off because it's probably supposed to.

Jacob's depressed and anxious. Yeah.

I sometimes wonder about the length of some dialogue portions. Feels like it could be shorter with other characters responding, especially with the Alakazam. It feels like a bit of a speech or explanation sometimes rather than something that characters interact with.

Would still like to see and hear a little bit more in the world to add some perspective. I'm curious. The whole story's going well so far, so keep up the good work. See you later.

So, alright, I should have gotten to this sooner, but oh well. Apologies for the delay, let me carry on with the actual review as to not prolong this any further.

To start off… I was going to note this opening did feel a bit generic, before we got the truly “Yikes” moment that the ending of chapter 1 was (considering the personality test section a thing separate of chapter 1 and what FFN lists as chapter 2 as chapter 1, so… yeah.) I remember you mentioning wanting to avoid that feeling sudden, but honestly, I say keep it as is. Adds to the amount of anxiety/fear Jacob is feeling in that moment alongside putting the reader in his shoes of thinking “Yikes, this is a slightly terrifying perspective to be in.”

Beyond that moment though… things do feel slightly generic and exposition-set-up-esque in terms of contents. Granted, that isn’t bad, you got to get stuff set-up before you can really move forward, but it does feel a bit heavy-handed at times here. Like Silver going on a specific rant about the Alakazam mentor/story-teller (which will almost certainly come back into play due to Cheknov’s gun.) or the crime in the island, and how exploration teams work, to someone they just met almost dead on the beach. Granted, that could be playing into how she wants to try to get him to form an exploration team with them, but I think you should play into her specifically doing all this to do that a bit more. (Also, on the topic of exposition, Silver’s backstory gets a pass on this, since it is organically fit into things.)

That’s about the harshest criticism I do have, so with that out of the way, let me delve into some more positives now. Namely, characterization.

I already mentioned this about Silver a little bit ago, but she seems to be very desperate to get Jacob to form a team with her. Part of me gets an impression this is derived from her wanting to have a solid relationship with someone, given how the other one she had with her parents kinda… got ruined. This got further developed in that whole depressing rant of hers in chapter 2, so I won’t delve into it that far, but I will say out of the two thus far, she has come off as the most well-defined and interesting.

Also, her old partner totally defected to Team Shade or died. We’ll see which one it ends up being. But oh boy, will that be a fun and sore subject for her to have to reveal to Jacob when the time comes.

Now, onto the second in the main duo. Jacob seems a bit generic. He’s in absolutely no way mary sueish like I remember you having fears over, but he kinda just… feels like he exists a decent amount of the time. I mean, I get a few vibes off him. He’s very observant and approaches situations fairly methodically (taking the time to think through how everything he has done will raise suspicion others have towards him being human and the such.) Yet he sometimes lets his emotions of fear cloud up said logical judgments, which I hope gets leaned into a bit more as time goes on.

I can see where the fear comes from, in terms of him being the crux of reacting to situations badly in the moment (although he almost spurt out that word that one time.) I’d possibly recommend maybe making him be a bit more reactive to situations around him, try to show rather than tell some of his thoughts sometimes, etc. Idk whether this is that good of advice given I haven’t seen that much of his character in action yet, but something I did want to note.

So, with all that said, let me delve into the plot we have seen thus far. Not much to comment on, but there are some I can delve into, so I shall.

We have a yellow headed pokemon going around rescuing these ‘mons and bringing them over to this world. After a consultation with a legendary list... something is telling me Jirachi, but I can’t be sure. Either way, it is a nice mystery for the reader to ponder over, so nothing wrong there.

Team Shade... seems like the main antagonists we will be dealing with, but we’ll see if there is some higher power that ends up controlling them or not. I get the impression as I noted before that Silver has some personal beef with them, which leads me into the theory that their old partner is now a part of/is associated with Team Shade. This is just me speculating of course, so nothing bad if it doesn’t end up going that way, but I am very, very curious if it does.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to add, really. I would make some specific comments on the personality test, but I frankly kinda want to dissect that on its own merits some other time, so I’ll save that task for later. Until then, I’ll be off.

See you later, Tilt and Arceus!

I really love your story so far

So far this seems like it'll be a pretty great story! I'm interested to see where it goes. Keep it up!