I've been playing Reborn for quite some time now, seen its development, played almost all routes, and before I dive into what I have to say, I just wanna say you guys did an amazing job. Truly, my favorite Pokémon game ever made.
My main issue remains one: Zero. We fight him so many times throughout the story, he gets tons of development after being separated from Eve and Lumi, and we have ending cutscenes with characters who feel much less important (looking at you, Gossip Gardevoir). Why wasn't he given an ending cutscene or a relationship meter? Is there a chance in a future update that he gets one? Idk, it feels like he's the only major character missing from that list.
Another minor gripe I have is the same issue with Aster and Eclipse, but they do get a (somewhat) ending cutscene BEFORE the end of the game. I just wish it was after, so it'd count as another major ribbon tied up perfectly
This was NOT done with the intention of criticizing, more like just discussing the game >.>
tysm i'm really happy you've enjoyed the game so much! and no worries, i mean even criticism is fair to levy.
so yeah i never really intended zero to be in the same main cast status as everyone else. and like, you're not the only one who feels that was a disservice to him. pretty late before e19 release, some of the other devs actually put in some extra effort to give him more of a presence in postgame, more dialog in nightclub, where i wasn't planning on it, because they also felt that he deserved the attention.
part of that was a holdover from when the relationship point system was put in. i marked down slots for eve and lumi way before they became their own characters in e18, because i knew they would. zero was excluded here because i still thought of him mainly as "Just" a grunt/villain (albeit you can see we perhaps treat our grunts a bit better than many other games). same with A&E. and then previous save files didn't have relationship points for him, so it's like, well now it's awkward.
he didn't get an ending scene because he didn't have a relationship thing. gardevoir i think did have a relationship thing that kind of ended up being unused iirc? unless im forgetting something, her presence in ending scenes is kind of Incidental. she's there because she's attached to other characters who are there. it's not about her (sorry, GG)
and you're right that A&E's final scene is very much meant to be similar closure as to the ending scenes. just they didn't have rep points either, so. little different. zero really does get the short end of the stick.
is there a chance of that changing in the future? maybe. team's making improvements more or less without me these days. it's probably not something i'm going to put the effort into spearheading compared to working on other projects, but i agree that the game would probably feel more complete were it eventually done.