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