the gameplay here feels closer to other monster collector jrpgs where you're heavily encouraged to use a variety of team compositions and strategies (think smt or the digimon games) and can't just play on autopilot like the majority of pokemon games which i really enjoyed conceptually. everythings buffed to be at least somewhat viable here but the enemy teams are for the most part built to where theres nothing thats gonna steamroll the entire game.
the biggest issue i have with this game is that you are straight up forced to grind lol. even on 'minimal grinding mode' you're still spending like half the playtime mass murdering audinos till you reach the level cap whenever you want to add something to your team which really soured the back half of this game. like yea i kinda get it but why design a game around experimenting with all these options and then make it so annoying to do so!!!! its even worse on the higher difficulties cuz they make items like lucky egg harder to obtain for some reason (like you wouldnt even be able to overlevel anyways in this game because theres a cap lol whatever). theres prob some elegant ways to remedy this that i dont care that much to think about i just like to complain.
overall really solid hack tho. one of the few examples of a pokemon difficulty hack that is actually challenging in a fun way and not in the i wanna kill myself way. kinda unplayable without emulator speedup moreso than other pokemon games but i had fun

Pokemon Radical Red shows us that despite the balance issues that pokemon has now, we should thank our lucky stars that it isn't balanced by fans.

You may be asking "prolific digital entertainment critic Harmless_xd, why doth thou decry this rom hack so?" Well, pokemon radical red is a difficulty hack first and foremost, the worst kind! This isn't to say I hate difficulty hacks, there have been ones I've enjoyed (I remember I liked unbound better than this one), but the issue I take with difficulty hacks like this is that the "improved balancing" is almost always worse, and the developers seem to be unable to make a challenging fight without giving the opposition a shit ton of legendaries. This versus pokemon insurgence is actually flirting versus harassment.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, that's just the abstract of this review. The main features of this game include pokemon balance changes, updated quality of life, every pokemon you could ever ask for, and some new story beats. About what you'd expect. It's also using modern mechanics, so physical special split, megas, gen 8+ moves, the works. It all sounds like a lot of fun, and when glancing at the changes to pokemon you think "wow I wanna try that!" Sadly, the balancing is horrible and what kills the entire game for me.

Now, the list of balance changes is enormous. It's a great read if you're in the mood for a heart attack. Many of the changes feel completely thoughtless and the only object was "let's make every pokemon broken!" which sounds kinda funny, until you realize that the overbuffed pokemon as well as the "old reliable" just stomp all the other ones into irrelevance. In an attempt to equalize power creep, the only thing it did was make it worse. It's almost like the game knows this, because for the most part, they are not using the newly buffed, supposedly "now good" pokemon. Maybe they'll show these new picks off early on, but mid to late game? They're using ol' reliable.
Sabrina is using a psyspam trick room team with hatterene, indeedee-f, ursaluna, crawdaunt and mega gardevoir.
Blaine uses a regular ass sun team that is effortlessly countered by using a pelipper, which isn't hard to find at all. His sunflora and typhlosion are not threatening.
Claire has a fucking magearna for no reason, and one of the actually good new pokemon in mega duraludon with its comically overpowered ability that just... turns off recoil and stat drops from moves. Why not, who gives a fuck.

From there, all of your opponents are just legendaries. Route 23 Bue has kartana because fuck you.
Brendan has Jirachi, Deoxys, Zapdos and Lando-T because fuck you.
Lorelei has either calyrex ice or primal kyogre because fuck you.
Bruno has zacian crowned (he needs it).
Lance has mega salamence, a new broken dialga form with 775BST and melmetal for no reason.
By the time you get to champion Blue the only "normal" pokemon he has is a scarf ditto, everything else is some busted up the ass box legendary or something comparable.
With all these new options, who did I fall back on for both of my playthroughs?
Rillaboom, mega salamence, mega metagross, corviknight, latios, and one of the only useful buffed pokemon in drapion (he needed wicked blow, apparently). You'll notice that these are all the good pokemon and only one of them is a buffed option.
Second playthrough I went with some lesser picks, with my only really good pokemon being clefable. Delcatty got special attacking huge power, cradily gets sappy seed, mega absol gets sharpness, and then well. Feraligatr and Entei didn't actually get anything I just like them. My all star lineup.
They made the endgame a true exercise in frustration.
Maybe my team composition was just bad, but I often felt like my pokemon were just getting stat checked by the big fuck you legendaries. I also feel this because all the non legendaries went down pretty easy.
Even when going out of my way to use the buffed pokemon, they still paled in comparison to the ones who were already good, or the lucky few who got buffed way too hard. It's worth noting that both of these were done in version 3.1, but looking at the changelog for 4.0 does not inspire confidence.

I think that's my issue though. A lot of the late game team design is just kind of lazy. It's a lot easier to make a boss fight difficult by giving them a bunch of overpowered pokemon instead of trying to think of an actually well put together team. I'm talking as if the early game is exempt from this issue though, because it's really not, but at the very least it is much more manageable, since you aren't as liable to getting straight up stat checked. Misty was definitely one of the harder fights for me because of her always annoying starmie, as well as the technician floatzel and protein frogadier, but it didn't feel too unfair because, well, these pokemon (for the most part) weren't that much stronger than mine stats wise. Surge pulls out a mega manectric a bit too early imo but I think I kicked his ass so idk lol. Same can't be said for the shitty endgame.

This last point is more of a me issue than anything, but one problem I have with a lot of difficulty hacks like this is that they really just feel like boss rushes played in a battle simulator. This isn't to say I didn't care about any of my pokemon, or that I take massive issue with using more than 6 (had almost a full box of reserves), but exploring kanto with amped up gym leaders isn't super exciting from a roleplaying perspective. Rom hacks with original regions are able to dodge this issue, but with kanto, a region I've play through countless times, I'm not super inspired and I don't feel like I'm on an "adventure". I feel like I'm just on auto pilot until the next boss fight, because with a few exceptions all of the trainers in this game are cannon fodder. Any training outside of ev training is pretty much pointless, because the game gives you more than enough exp and resources to hit the level cap within minutes. This isn't a bad thing for this type of game, but it kinda makes the whole "adventure" aspect of pokemon fall kind of flat for me.

Radical Red certainly wasn't a joyless experience for me. If anything I have some weird Stockholm Syndrome for it. Despite how bullshit it can be, despite how stupid a lot of the balancing is, pokemon is fun and it's hard for me to not have a good time playing it. My latest playthrough may have been frustrating, but I did have some fun, and it was somewhat satisfying to take down some opponents (sadly beating the elite 4 was more like a "thank god it's over" and not a "hooray I'm goated"). It was... an experience. A heavily flawed, often frustrating experience, but I guess I can't say that I hated it.

I do desperately need the trend of "game freak can't balance shit, here's my improved list" (500x worse) to end. Ledian is going to be bad forever you we just need to make peace with that.

I've marked this as Shelved, but I might be back on it as soon as tomorrow.

Radical Red is for a certain breed of person. I've never got on with "competitive" Pokémon, it does absolutely nothing for me. But I read about RR and found its sales pitch really interesting. What if Fire Red was balanced to be played like competitive pokémon, had a bunch of QoL upgrades that made team building much easier and streamlined, and also every fucking Pokémon ever was in it? Oh, and also, it's hard as all bloody fucking shit. That's RR!

And, to my surprise, I enjoy it! It's making me think about Pokémon in a way I never have before, considering statistical builds and specific roles within my squad (tanky walls, status effect stallers, sweepers etc)! Which is cool! I like running into boss characters, failing miserably, and then having to go to my Boxes and figure out ok, who's going to substitute nicely here to beat this fud? Do I give up a mon in slot 1 to set up for a sweeper to come in and just wreck house? That's fun as fuck.


But it's also far too hard. Fuck off Giovanni you absolute cunt, take your Mega Evolved Kangaskhan with you.

This is my perfect pokemon game. It updates with a new dex and new mechanics every generation. It also makes a proper attempt, and mostly succeeds at making an AI driven pokemon game difficult, and require a level of planning and strategy to win your boss battles. With a built in randomizer, and cheats/settings that you let you play with exactly as much grinding as you want, radical red allows you to customize every run to fit how you want to play it. The options are endless, and I'd love to see GameFreak put this much love and care into any of their current day products.

After many hackroms that were Fire red but improved" I found one that has become my favorite and my ultimate way to revisit Kanto gen 3.

It's going to be difficult for me to play the base games again or even other hackroms since they won't have all the things that this particular hack has that has so much work behind it. To name a few, there's no need to have Pokemon with moves like flying or surfing, the game gives them those abilities passively and you save quite a bit. The Pokevial and portable pc, tweaked properly so you don't abuse, services like teaching your Pokemon past moves or egg moves after solving a few puzzles. And a long etc.

The customization, the conveniences, the new challenges, and the fun that comes with it all. And that the hack is not yet complete, it has restricted certain areas that were there in the original Fire Red but here they are preparing them to make more content, I guess along with the Pokemon of the 9th generation, which the creator confirmed. No problem, there are still so many things to enjoy right now.

If you think things like "I'd like to try Fire Red but it's more fun and comfortable way to play" or "I've only tried bad Pokemon hackroms, there are no good ones" give this one a try, it's worth it.

Pros: Jumpluff :3 fofo dms mano

Cons: Pokémon não é uma série estranha à versões feitas por fãs que alteram o jogo em várias maneiras; uma chance do autor de adicionar ou "consertar" o que quiser na série. O que eu vi em Radical Red foi uma distorção perversa do conceito de quality of life a ponto de prejudicar um dos apelos principais da série.

O conceito de quality of life que eu utilizarei aqui é algo feito com a intenção de deixar a vida do jogador mais fácil, muitas vezes simplificando mecânicas e features antes obtusos e pouco intuitivos. Muitos romhacks implementam esses upgrades de maneira positiva: a remoção de evoluções por trade parece quase óbvia, e a adição de certos NPCs no mundo que te ajudam a customizar um pokémon através de mecânicas “invisíveis” como EVs e IVs foram tão bem vindas que não é surpreendente que a própria GameFreak passou a implementar maneiras de editar essas mecânicas nos jogos oficiais.

Infelizmente, o jeito que Radical Red trata seus quality of life upgrades é quase cômico - ouso descrevê-las como práticas anti-jogo deixam a experiência mais rasa, uma que mais se equivale aos simuladores de browser populares como o Pokémon Showdown do que com um jogo da série. O autor deixa claro logo de cara que essa é a intenção, antes do primeiro ginásio você descobre a remoção de golpes que aumentam evasion e batalhas com mecânicas “anti-cheese”. A que ficou na minha cabeça foi a remoção de efeitos como Poison Point e Effect Spore nas batalhas selvagens, algo que eu nem consigo classificar como “quality of life” mais. Pra mim a graça de encontrar, sei lá, um Weedle selvagem na floresta, é que ele sozinho não é um grande perigo, mas você precisa tomar cuidado com seu veneno que pode te prejudicar na sua travessia. Se você não pode se envenenar no campo, e não pode usar itens em batalhas de treinador na dificuldade normal, qual é o propósito de itens como Antídotos?

A impressão que dá é que o autor edita as mecânicas não para melhor implementá-las na sua visão do jogo ideal, mas para tirá-las do caminho, optando por retirá-las completamente. Na minha jogatina, lembrei de quando Black/White 2 estava saindo e os fãs comemorando a adição de um prompt que te dá a opção de usar um repelente quanto o que você estava usando acaba - comparado com o "Repelentes infinitos de graça" que você recebe antes do primeiro ginásio do Radical Red, a diferença fala por si só.

E tipo, tudo bem! Não tem nada de errado com fazer um mod que foca em um aspecto específico de um jogo. Minha parte favorita foi a montagem de times, pesquisar onde fica tal pokémon, quais golpes ele aprende e como ele encaixaria no resto da equipe - o processo de pegar e treinar o pokémon certo tão rápido e simplificado dão mais valor para a estratégia pré e durante a batalha. Eu queria mudar meu time para a Elite 4, e nesse processo eu peguei 3 pokémons selvagens (incluindo um pidgey lv. 5), subi eles pro lv.85 e ensinei todos os golpes que eu queria em menos de 10 minutos. E embora isso seja super legal pra mim, eu só não acho que a troca que o hack faz vale muito pena, há várias outras alternativas à ele que conseguem executar praticamente a mesma coisa sem jogar imersão fora como Radical Red faz aqui.

Eu geralmente acredito que os jogos melhoram com mais foco, mas não estou convencido de que esse foi o caso aqui. É importante lembrar que Radical Red não foi o primeiro romhack e não será o último com essas práticas, muito do apelo das romhacks vêm de uma combinação da popularidade da série, um desdém pela falta de ambição da GameFreak e uma vontade de “fazer melhor”. Eles colocam mais centenas e centenas de criaturas sem pensar no que isso muda na temática da região e realidade do jogo; mudam mecânicas do jogo principal sem pensar em como o resto do game sofrem com isso; aumentam drasticamente as chances de achar um shiny e consequentemente deixa-os sem valor; e geralmente chegam a algo que não vai muito além de, sei lá, “mecanicamente satisfatório”. Radical Red nada mais é do que esse pensamento esticado ao seu cúmulo.

this is the Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne of Pokémon

(Version played: 4.0 update, Hardcore Mode)

I'm not sure why I went back to this game since I was very mixed about it on my 3.0 playthrough, but I don't know I guess I really wanted to give the game another shot with a different perspective, that and hearing people seethe online about it, actually yeah those two reasons are why I went back to it. so yeah, I started the game, decided to go through Hardcore Mode this time, and made it all the way to the Indigo League. my thoughts?

it's PEEAAAAAK

okay maybe it's not peak but it's still really good

to be fair I did enter some in-game cheats at the beginning of the game that I couldn't have done Hardcore Mode without, and before you go "uhhhhh CHEATER you did not beat the game" first off yes I did not beat the game why do you think this review says "Shelved", second off the game doesn't penalize you at all for using the in-game cheats so as far as I'm concerned they're encouraged if you really want to go through that route, and lastly the two main cheats I used (free Rare Candies at Viridian, 100% successful catch rate on any Poké Ball) are more or less ways to make things more convenient for me so I can go "oh I don't have to spend time grinding anymore!" and "oh I can get my Pokémon right away now!", they're really huge time savers.

as for the actual game, this hack is a team builder's dream since every Pokémon to my knowledge has been spread out to the entirety of Kanto (that's pretty amazing shoutouts to the devs for pulling that off). by the time you get to Brock you'll already have a great variety of Pokémon to choose from and it'll only grow larger the further you go. add that along with the DexNav feature that lets you immediately find the Pokémon you want as well as the catch rate cheat I mentioned in parenthesis earlier and you should have no problem with finding and building your teams. certain items as well as moves and Abilities are taken from you in Hardcore Mode but the Nature changer in the Pokémon Centers are free in this mode so I'd say that's a worthy trade-off (you also get ways to change your Abilities later on thought I should mention). during the entire game you'll have Level Caps that prevent you from over leveling at a certain point (no easy Lv. 100 for you) and the Level Cap increases a bit after certain boss battles, and I'll say that even if you reach the end of the current Level Cap, the game will still be challenging.

now for that difficulty, this is very much a competitive oriented Pokémon hack. you won't see Brock using a Geodude that faints after one Water Gun, instead Brock is going to bust out a permanent Sandstorm with a full team of six, featuring a Sand Rush Cacnea with an Eviolite, a Lunatone with Ancient Power and Psybeam, and a Varoom with an Air Balloon to prevent you from exploiting it's 4x Ground weakness immediately, first Gym btw. now you may be thinking that this is ridiculous, but believe or not there's ways to go around it. remember you have a ton of Pokémon to choose from, so you can map things out like "oh this Pokémon took down two team members, I'll keep this one around" or "this one isn't able to do anything useful, I should swap it out for another Pokémon" and "this one's good but it's not doing as much as I'd like, maybe I should change up its moveset". for the most part I went into Gym Battles and others of the like by going with the team I was currently using for the first attempt, and then slowly I'd swap them out one-by-one until I found the (near) perfect combination of Pokémon that could reliably counter the team I'm facing as if I was putting together a puzzle. really Radical Red is a puzzle game: it looks overwhelming at first (and probably still will be after a while), but with enough time and patience you can start to figure it out and put everything together. I will say that though that at a certain point of the game I was able to gather a couple of really good Pokémon that could fit in most of the difficult battles afterwards so I wasn't swapping out my teams as much as I was before.

now is the difficulty "unfair"? no it's not, but I'll admit it does get a bit BS at times. of course, your opponents are going to have more options before you do; when you get to Lt. Surge bosses will start pulling out Mega Evolutions (something you won't be able to do until after Silph Co.), then when you get to Erika Ultra Beasts are brought into the picture, then when you face Sabrina (who is the 5th Gym Leader here) Legendaries and Mythicals are now on the table and they won't be dying down anytime soon. however I will once again mention that it is possible to overcome these crazy teams with enough time and patience, though that's not to say that I myself got into a "what do I even do here" moment a few times during the late game. the most well known example I think of is that at one point you're forced to go through two boss fights in a row, without healing. now granted it isn't two full six teams rather a five member team then a four member team right after, but this is Radical Red we're talking about here so they're still going to find a way to make it as difficult as possible. I could just manage to survive the first battle but then the second one immediately drops a Wailord with a Water Type equivalent of Oblivion Wing in Bouncy Bubble that I could not get pass against. this was one of the two times I conceded defeat and instead looked up another guy's team online to see what Pokémon they used for the battle and just copy what they did, hey at least you get some useful items after that.

now I'll give you three pieces of advice if you want your Radical Red experience to be more manageable. 1: get the Poké Vial. you'll have to do a puzzle battle at Viridian City to get it but once you figure that out you get an item that give you six free PokéCenter heals in the overworld and it refills whenever you heal up at a PokéCenter, you never need to purchase healing items ever. 2: get the Inf. Repel. I'm pretty sure this is an unskippable item in Viridian Forest, anyway when you obtain and enable it, random wild encounters are gone for as long as you have it on so you can just focus on venturing through the world without Wild Pokémon bogging you, another great time saver. 3: save and heal often. Gym Leaders aren't the only bosses here, certain NPCs that look like regular trainers will actually be boss battles (at least in Hardcore mode) with more dangerous teams than regular trainers, and you can be sure they become more common later down the line so make sure you prepared whenever that happens, also there are a few moments where you about to enter a new area only for someone to pop out and go "Hey, (player character) it's me, (important NPC)! Time for your 4 P.M. surprise boss fight, no you can't refuse!" so yeah have fun

alright you made it the end of my review and that's epic so your reward for reading all of this is me providing you the cheat codes I entered in the game console in Pallet Town down in the comments so you can have an easier time with Radical Red, that or you skipped all the way to the end which if you did, shame on you but I'll still provide the codes anyway. so yes Radical Red is GOOD maybe even GREAT and I feel like some people are just way too harsh on it. just be patient, collect a ton of Pokémon, and figure out which ones work for which situations. "OOOOH BUT THE DIFFICULTY OHH I CAN'T STAND THE DIFFICULTY" ok then bro why don't you go back to vanilla FireRed and find yourself a Kadabra to Calm Mind and Psychic through the entire game you big baby

there's a boss fight near the end that clowns on people that self-insert themselves into Pokémon hacks that was so based

This is a great romhack for anyone who hates a good time. I genuinely would love to give this hack a high rating for its technical achievements and the seamless integration of those aspects, but as someone who actually tried to nuzlocke this game (basically meaning using suboptimal teams at all times, as pokemon should be played) I got my ass whooped and there was nothing I could do about it. And sure, you could scream "filtered!!!" as Showdown dwellers love to do, but seriously, this hack crumbles under the slightest bit of scrutiny even from a competitive perspective.

I'm gonna preface this by once again reiterating that I did nuzlocke the game, and so my pokemon choices were limited, but I even further handicapped myself by randomizing pokemon and their abilities. I didn't know the repercussions of this until much later into the game, at which point the ball was already rolling so there was no point in stopping. I have honestly no idea why the game refuses to let you randomize boss battles, but I digress. I will also mention that I had to lax the rules of nuzlocke quite a fair bit to prevent myself from constantly wiping and having to restart, though the spirit stayed up until the end of the game.

Even if you don't take into account my Obviously Wrong way to play this hack, the boss battles are way too unbalanced for what you're given, and they're also TOO DAMN FREQUENT. Trainers having items that you don't have access to was already a huge red flag, but it got worse once I actually realized how the AI functioned. Difficulty is a subjective type of thing, but I believe in a fair and balanced game. What you face as a player must play under the same rules as you do. In Pokemon, for example, the AI should only be aware of what I can see from their end: the Pokemon that they have shown to me, and the moves that they have used, as well as items that have triggered. Difficulty, in this case, would depend on how smart the AI is in predicting what I'm going to do next based on that info.

So explain to me why the AI changes and reacts to swapping pokemon (that haven't been displayed yet), items, and movesets? How does it know those things? I'm sorry but I think I missed out on this update to competitive! Sarcasm aside, this is just bullshit. If the creators were just trying to mimick predicting by making the AI know what you have, I'm sorry but it doesn't work. You've actively made the opposing agent stronger than the player by making them play under different rules. In the most succinct words, you've failed.

And the worst part is this isn't an infrequent occurance, because "boss" battles are EVERYWHERE. Regular trainers are changed into them. You run into them on accident all the time, because rivals have changed positions and have new positions. It gets tiring. Like, really tiring. I wanted this game to be over by the 5th gym. And then it makes you fight Giovanni 3 times. It makes you fight the Rocket duo 3 times. It FORCES you to rematch gym leaders before you can move on. You couldn't define padding better than this if you tried.

Oh yeah, before I forget, gyms? Do you remember how they're supposed to have themes with the typings? Just wanted to let you know that Sabrina has 3/6 Psychic types. Koga has 2/6 Poison types. Gyms having pokemon that are out of the typing theme is a regular occurance because "muh competitive team". Look, I just wanna know why Misty has a Ferrothorn. I really need someone to sit down and give me a good reason as to why this makes sense within the context of the game. Speaking of context, the champion? Like your rival, which has one of the starters you didn't pick? Not anymore. The starter turned into Koraidon or Miraidon, because that makes sense. And 4/6 of his pokemon are legendaries (some of which you don't even have access to, and two of which are some of the best pokemon in Ubers!).

"Just play on easy scrub" Yes actually! That sounds like a good idea. The game might be some fun then, but I doubt it. The meat is still there. It'll still be a slog.

Another review on here gave it a mention, but I'd just like to note that the Pokemon community is forever doomed to optimizing the fun out of their children's game. Being an adult means that your hobbies should be lifeless too. So why should Pokemon be enjoyable?

And it's funny too, because a lot of the decisions made to Pokemon seemed to somewhat steer that way. They turned Ledian into a decent pokemon that's actually pretty fun to use. But you can't, it's not optimal! Good summary for the experience really.

radical red is a labor of love by an entire community that somehow includes almost every pokemon in existence on a gba file and finds way to implement them all in competitive-esque battles to give a challenging, varied experience.

and i am about to be very mean to it. sorry.
radical red is a very impressive endeavor but i do not like it. not because it is difficult(it’s really not that bad there’s several cheese strats if you desperately desire to win), but because i do not like what it says about the pokemon community and its proclivities. pokemon fans have a massive chip on their shoulder over the fact that they are obsessed with a series for children. and to be clear, it is fine to love pokemon at any age, i myself am a grown pokemon addict, but the current obsession with hacks that have EVERY POKEMON and are the SUPER HARDEST EVER NO ACTUALLY reeks of a combination of insecurity and an unwillingness to venture beyond pokemon’s constraints. there are brutally difficult jrpgs out there, but pokemon necessarily has a difficulty ceiling because a lot of pokemon are just better than others. the moment players have access to aegislash, urshifu, mega audino for some reason, etc. the game becomes easy but with the appearance of difficulty because the trainers all have minmaxed legendaries and slightly more competent AI. eventually it feels like the game is patting you on the back for beating the SUPER DIFFICULT HARDCORE ACTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE game that hasn’t actually ever been that.
pokemon fans want to optimize themselves to death and to that end i have to ask, why are you not just playing competitive? radical red hall of fame teams tend to just look like competitive teams so i’m confused why pokemon fans froth over this. it creates and environment with 1000 pokemon to use, but by pokemon’s nature, when a game gets this ‘difficult’ there are really only ~60 pokemon worth using. you can lug a ledian to the elite four if you want but it feels like the game doesn’t want you to.

radical red is just a symptom of a greater problem; people adore it so obviously it fills a desire of the community, but this constant push towards optimizing all the fun out of the games is misguided and making rom hacks boring and samey. there are new difficulty hacks with every pokemon daily at this point and even though radical red is one of the originals, i find the entire genre uninteresting and devoid of the charm a standard pokemon adventure has. if i wanted to fight battles with legendaries and the top 1% of pokemon i’d just go play vgc.

Despite going in knowing this game has had a reputation in the past, I wanted to give it a genuine go. A fair shake, form my own opinions... EV training is something I usually quite enjoy, and I did partake in my fair share of competitive Pokemon from the Black/White era up until the end of the Sun/Moon era. The premise for this hack honestly seemed really promising to me as a result! And what I got was a technically good game... that is generally unenjoyable to play through. Unfortunately so, because I really liked the opening to this game and the first gym battle provided a good taste of what should've followed.

The balancing for this game is all over the place. On the one hand you get a lot of resources off the bat- too much all at once I would argue -but on the other hand you're left starved of resources that the enemy gets access to WAY before you can. As early as the third gym you will be fighting mega evolutions fairly consistently, with even your rival and AI partner getting access to megas before you can. When DO you get megas though? After Sabrina. Alright... so for most of the early game and part of the mid game you're fighting a generally uphill battle; keep in mind, uphill. Not impossible. Not even always unfair. But a lot of the time it comes down to finding a specific Pokemon to counter the boss, which by itself isn't a bad idea. However: The game boasts custom balancing, from changing existing Pokemon to adding custom moves and even entirely new forms. Though it's not impossible to work with these, often times the specific solutions to boss fights are using Pokemon that weren't even changed and/or were already really good in the real competitive scene. In a nutshell, it feels like you should "get meta" or really just suffer because of it.

The balancing overall feels out of wack. I felt this most with Lavender Town: The boss fight against Marowak is a Level 58 WITH ADDED STAT BOOSTS and coverage moves whilst your level cap is 56... and then directly after that you're fighting Level 42-ish Pokemon with moves like Scary Face. Boss encounters should obviously be a noticeable challenge but a difference this huge in the same area (one room apart no less) is absolutely nuts. Honestly the Silph Co tower made this feel a bit evident too, with how there are three consecutive boss fights (in all fairness you get a free heal and have easy access to a full team heal as well); one being your rival, which is fairly well balanced and decently enjoyable. The second being a tag fight against Archer and Ariana, which is where the mega evolution starvation was especially felt... on top of the AI partner really being set up to fail, from having a lead Pokemon that instantly buffs the opposing Gothitelle to being given a Mega Sceptile that is stuck with Mega Drain and Dragonbreath. Keeping in mind the enemies at this point have long had access to competitive strategies and proper moves... including the third Silph Co. boss, Giovanni. In his first encounter he already had a Mega Kangaskhan. He still has that here, fair enough, but he also just gets to have a competitive-grade Garchomp because why wouldn't he. It's a shame because he does have a fairly interesting lead with Hippowdon, only to then devolve into the average OU team.

Really, I feel like a lot of my bitching is...well, bitching. But when they go out of their way to stop you from getting access to competitive items early, as well as making you deal with 30+ experience levels of mega evolutions before you can feel like you're on a level playing field, I would say the janky balancing is fair play to be critiqued. To put it another way, there was rarely a moment where I felt satisfied in my eventual victories... it was more commonly the feeling of "Fucking finally" which isn't a good thing to make the player feel in place of actual satisfaction. I don't mind swapping team members around and using multiple Pokemon, in fact it's something I love to do. But when just about every boss trainer invalidates at least one of the Pokemon you really want to use it's not a fun feeling; it rarely felt like my own fault for having a badly built team, it was more or less the game punishing me for wanting to try out the new toys it's given me. The feeling doesn't get much better as the game goes on, but I wanted to at least get to the elite four before calling it quits. Thankfully I did at least have the will to go on and finish it, but not the post-game...

...but I did nearly run through the game a second time. Yes, seriously, for real, I put myself through it one and a half times. The first playthrough I did on vanilla settings, but for my attempted second run I tried mininal grinding mode since it piqued my interest. Unfortunately, my feelings remained mostly the same. The only real difference is how it cuts down training and catching, because even with an easier bar for entry (no EVs + perfect IVs for everyone) and knowing what fights had what Pokemon? It was really much of the same experience. A fun taste at the beginning that quickly devolves into a hellish uphill battle, which becomes a largely mediocre experience after finally getting the tools your opponents have been using for most of the game. For what it's worth the champion battle felt like a satisfying enough end, although truth be told I don't know how much of that was me being happy to be done with the game.

All I've done so far is complain, but what about positives? Well. The Pokemon buffs do make the game fairly interesting and were a main draw for me... my main issue there is just how a number of Pokemon are still relatively useless despite getting really fun anf exciting changes. Likewise, when the enemy teams aren't your average Smogon tryhard they can be fairly creative. If anything that makes me hate the difficulty discrepancy more though! The devs clearly know how to make an interesting battle yet most of the time opt to just look at what's hot in OU or Ubers and make a team revolving around that. The presentation is good... yeah, that's a positive I don't really think has a drawback to it. At first I would've said the Pokemon availability to be a positive, but the game is so chock-full of encounters to shove in that it was borderline unplayable without inputting an in-game cheat that opens the DexNav without needing to go through random encounters first. Not to mention just how many of these Pokemon have a consistent usage (or even a niche usage) is heavily up for debate, considering every potential option is up against options that also outclass them. It makes for what I think is a pretty redundant meta, even as a singleplayer experience.

People have already torn the unfun enemy AI to shreds by now and I think that plays into the unfun feeling; you can't have a counter in your pocket because the AI just fucking knows about it before you get a chance to use it. The battle that, retrospectively, was the beginning of this game's downfall exemplifies this; the rocket grunt after Nugget Bridge. I lead a Flaaffy with Power Gem, unintentionally giving me a coverage option against his Growlithe. But suspiciously enough the AI swaps out it out before I've shown that I have the move... hhmmmmm... so, you end up playing hot potato with your switches because the AI has help from Jesus, apparently. Also this grunt has a competitive Gabite, because fuck you. As I said earlier in this ramble of a review; it's not impossible, it's just unfun to deal with. Even when I knew it was coming. That's not a good thing. I shouldn't have to say that it's not a good thing. But apparently all-knowing AI is a good thing in someone's eyes...

When this game is fun, it honestly is fun. But when this game drags, you absolutely feel the drag. And unfortunately for every step forward this game takes, it takes a few steps back and ends up as a horrendously mixed bag of trail mix that is technically well made at the core but has so much going against it at the same time. I wish this game were fun because the core of it all is an interesting prospect. There's genuine challenge and difficult, but then there's what they did here...

Apparently the devs use their Discord to mock people who don't like the game? So in the off-chance they read this: You've got great ideas going here, and kudos for wanting to make a more challenging Pokemon game. But this is not how it should be done. The difficulty ramps way too fast and starves you of resources as a way of making you feel underpowered by comparison. I don't hate this hack, I had fun moments with it to the point I decided to seek out shinies for some of my final team members (Lopunny and Flareon if you're curious) but there is just too much of that "Thank fuck that's over" feeling to make the entire game a satisfying experience.

Maybe I'll check the postgame out at some point, or maybe I'll just finish my minimal grind run. But as far as I'm concerned, I'm done with this game unless a major overhaul happens.

No papel, o jogo tem ideias mto boas: Um pokémon de GBA mais desafiador, com golpes e monstros atualizados, e vários ajustes de QOL.

Entretanto, o jogo peca por algumas decisões ruins, como remoção de golpes OHKO. Parece que o dev quis deixar um jogo essencialmente singleplayer numa experiência mais "competitiva", tipo smogon. Por algum motivo imbecil também removeram o game corner, algo que já estava nele e não tinha motivo nenhum para sua ausência.

Além disso, tirei alguns pontos por conta da quantidade de memes de reddit sem graça (jojo fan, retarded kid, self insert do criador, NPCs falando "go get beat up lmao"), q só quebram a imersão da jogo e não acrescentam em nada à experiência. Também removi alguns pontos por conta de uma IA que claramente trapaceia lendo seus inputs, algo que é facilmente comprovado usando-se save states.

Por fim, foi um romhack legal, mas com decisões de design totalmente desnecessárias que só machucam o valor total da obra.