another romhack W kinda unfortunately. playing this i had an epiphany about competitive pokemon but before that lemme say that doin this three innates + one selectable ability on every mon shit is crazyyyy cool and smthn that i'd like to see carried forward for romhacks, kinda like how day/night cycles are the complimentary bread you get with a romhack meal. three innates keep the core identity of most mons in tact and the selectable ability lets you splash between some gimmick, offensive, or defensive niches, meaning that you can pop out with the offensive v-create trick room solrock one gym then have him on some shiesty sand support rocker type beat the next gym. never been one to really hankerdown on one set of mons but with how quickly you can switch EVs and abilities, and thus team niches for each mon, it makes homie loyalty an actual incentive...rather a nostalgia prison of how watching venusaur clicking giga drain for 23 hours of the 40 hour experience was secretly fun because it distracted you from that overdue LabCorp bill you got last time you got burned and had to go to the clinic. similarly the minimal grinding shit this does along with level caps feels essential for the similar smogon simulator breed of romhacks that have been cropping up tryna ride radical red's high. this fares sooooo much better than radical red just on account of how quickly it is to drop and build teams back up, you can run a full new set of six after every gym if you wanted and that kinda easy team variety is something i think this genre has been missing for a long ass time now.

course as you can imagine here the power scaling is pushing prosperous amounts of P when niggas have four abilities--the recent 1.5v build has brought things back into the realm of sanity (weather teams were gettin the goob nut off on everything) but still keeps cool balance changes like feraligtr being a superbeast or dewong being an unkillable support god who comes up and sets up six turns of aurora veil for free for the whole gang. i think this has finally fulfilled the true promise of every mon is viable here that every romhack hitherto has claimed but never really succeeded. like, no lil baby, but if ur rlly 4PF you can build a team to have beautifly 6-0 super sweep about half of the elite four without requiring much more than some hazard support to be honest. not every change is perfect,,, (i beat this on 1.0 where weather abilities weren't as nerfed, and lets just say sharpedo with strong jaw + swift swim is first ballot hoenn HOF--conversely; parasect my friend....welcome to the guangdong tigers) but there's more than enough boosts here to justify a toe tip for even the most experienced romhackers. some personal favorites:

-- steelix getting shore up + some shiest defensive abilites lets him be an actual top tier wall, capitalizing on how good steel/ground is as a defensive typing whilst also minimizing how quickly he falls over to special attackers (still weak to them and other breakers but not in a crippling way as in before).
-- LOVE dhelmise here, some innates give you triple types and dhelmise is a grass/steel/ghost combo. AND has an ability that makes him only neutral fire and deal neutral damage back to fire types with grass STABs, AND has fucking water absorb for some reason. which means blud is like a super ferrothorn that can maintain excellent hazard control with spin but still put on that presh with a poltergeist + STAB anchor shot combo.
-- hitmonchan gets priority on all punching moves, letting him pop out with priority boltbeam coverage and a priority CC for funsies.
-- Typholsion having a priority eruption is fucking hilarious + he can splash on sand teams cause he's a ground type for some reason
-- greninja is so insanely cracked they give him wicked blow and skill link for water shuriken, like why.
-- Slaking can opt for truant or an ability that lets him act every turn but just move last, which is still p great
-- Lots of mons like sirfetch'd have this ability called Rampage which lets them avoid recharge if they get a KO, meaning you can run goofy shit like scarf giga impact tauros as a cleaner or even something more unserious like aerilate rampage giga impact dragonite as a cleaner. fun for the whole family.
-- giving tangrowth a neutrality to fire + an ability that gives him free lefties is so nice, genuinely kinda heartwarming that after decades of stall ballcrushing a romhacker is willing to toss the more patient amongst us a bone. stall players are truly feasting on the low tho between sheninja buffs + blissy regenerator + new intimidate for special attackers + more access to recovery and roost and auto-healing abilites across the board. if ur struggling early-mid game just get a quag and wall everybody, trust

now onto the epiphany: could be burn out since competitive singles dominates about 30% of my life in between youtube recommendations, me & my friends' draft league, spare showdown sessions, and occasional romhack runs like this but i think the appeal of mons to me will never be fully unlocked. about the 7th gym here i kinda got bored of all the shocking new changes and really just kinda wanted to be done with the whole endeavor lmao. as cool as the new changes are the game never feels like it can catchup to player ingenuity in a way that another player would, resulting in either some self-imposed limitations to even the scales or AI just using legendaries out the gate to even the odds. its cool that drake has a mega rayquaza, i guess? but if u got to pull out that shit just to make the game difficult i feel like there's some other considerations in terms of AI and trainer team building to be had here. likewise i look forward to when this gets some kinda movepool or ability expansion, not to undercut the sails of the aforementioned changes because they all are genuinely fun but like the shit boils down to the same archetypes for mons we've had since like gen 3: hits hard but slow, hits hard but fast, walls physical, walls special, gets up hazards, removes hazards, etc etc etc. the fact that any given mon can fulfill at least one of these roles viably is great, but without any change to the way these niches interact with each other or the kind of core teambuilding considerations to competitive pokemon as a whole its very whatever. maybe playing the whole game in doubles woulda fixed that (doubt it) but about 30 hours in it felt like i was swapping variables for the same formula rather than experiencing some transmutive. and look i get it, romhack, can only expect so much, and the scope achieved here is already crazy impressive, BUT i would be lying to u reader if i didnt walk away wanting more & more....for once i see gamefreak's vision in how they've tried to shake up battling for a decade now with z-moves, dynamax, terra, etc. z-moves were the best out of those IMO but like we need a gamefreak version of drive gauge or some shit--this is in many ways a lot of pokefiends' dream romhack, but the dream has made it clearer than ever that we've been smokin mids.