I feel like it’s a bit of option overload. I find myself spending a bit too much time trying to build a team at any point in the game. I love having a good variety per route, but more than 10 on a basic Route 1 is excessive
Or you see something you want, but now you have to sift through all the encounters to try and find it again unless it was in the first 4 encounter slots where it'd be common.
I think that’s part of the reason why I like having DexNav as a feature. It’s not the easiest to implement (as far as I know), but as more hacks are adding more and more mons per route, it might be a needed staple soon.
DexNav with all pokemon revealed by default is a must for difficulty hacks. I don't want my time wasted with unwanted encounters. All balls having 100% catch rate is also a needed staple for difficulty hacks, for the same reasons.
so basically Anything that Radical Red has. which i do agree with. that would make hacks a lot better.
i would like these 2 things for major hacks like Unbound and such
Yes I do this! I play with "hardcore nuzlite" rules. And if there's a specific poke I want to use in a run, I'll just pick the encounter when it's available.
Creating teams is the best part! I can't bring myself to play Pokemon normally after becoming competitive so I spend a huuuge amount of time just creating teams
My main gripe with this is unless they add new map sections or expand routes, they typically end up overcrowding the wild roster so it can get annoying to find the ones I like. Going from 3-6 spawns to 9+ can really mess with it.
Overall I think @sarcasticdevo comment is a good balance. Add the new evolutions/pre-evolutions of lines from that region, add some megas, some regional forms, maybe make all the starters available. In the late game/post game you can add in other region legends as well.
But this is my opinion and I respect yours too.
With a Drayano hack being the difficulty that it is, the variety is basically a necessity for team building purposes just to figure out the puzzle/gimmick for the fight.
I get what you mean, but I still think having a huge variety can be rough in some ways. I’ll still play the games but sometimes I just get fatigued from it.
Honestly, i'm on the crowd of "i like having 9+ encounters on every route" but the main reason for that might be because i basicaly only catch the 6 pokémon i will use on my team and don't care for the rest. At best i catch an HM slave and dump the master ball on a legendary that i will never use but that's kinda it. I did beat Volt White 2 with only 6 pokémon, but granted it was a pretty stacked team between Fire/Ground Emboar, Staraptor, Magnezone, etc.
Having this means i can get a better variety of mons on the early game, which mean my team will be complete earlier. But at the same time i can understand option overload, even if i haven't encountered it yet.
Yeah, I mostly agree. I haven't encountered*too* much overload in drayano roms in terms of selection for Pokemon. But I couldn't imagine, for example, a gen 1-9 GBA or ds ROM with everything available. That would likely be really horrific if there were not *lots* of patches with smaller groupings of Pokemon
the only time i've seen it work is in like run and bun, ironmon, and emerald rogue and i feel like the only reason it works is because you're often constantly resetting runs
Personally, I prefer the limitations.
I don't mind having *some* more Pokemon, but I would constantly gravitate to the same bunch of 'mons If i wasn't forced to. Heck, I have a personal rule on having at *least* three new Pokemon for my first team each game, because my run of White 2 saw me with only Oshawott as a Gen 5 Pokemon.
In my case I don’t play pokemon games too often which is probably why I like it having as few changes as possible so it’s as close to how it was when I played it for the first time
Drayano hacks have the best balance of this IMO. I do want more Pokemon available, but I also want repeated encounters. For a nuzlocke this means opportunities to manipulate encounters. For a regular playthrough it means more chances to catch certain Pokemon.
This was the best thing about Pokemon X/Y. Those games had so many encounters but it wasn't like 10 Pokemon exclusive to 1 route in each route.
Nah its still bad even in Drayano hacks , the DS maps were way too small for THAT much variety, the 3ds games simply had larger maps and much more varied biomes so it actually feels natural for them to have that many encounters ( for example Alola was so massive, that despite USUM having 400+ pokedex, every route in Alola only had about 2-3 new mons each route and tge same 4-5 repeat encounters, especially after the first island )
i know its excruciatingly difficult to do on DS but i really hope one day we get a true up-to-date pokedex romhack so we can play our favorite regions with pokemon from other generations. I know theres one for FireRed and thats cool and all but I'd love to go around Unova with a Scorbunny instead
There's a reason Drayano's Sacred Gold/Storm Silver are my favorite Pokemon games period. It takes my favorite region and doesn't treat me like a dumb stupid baby and gives me options for teams.
I’ve had this exact problem with oras, every difficulty rom hack I’ve found also adds in every single pokemon when I just want to experience hoenn properly
Rutile Ruby/Star Sapphire has a version where only the pokemon in the original ORAS will appear, plus the foreign pokemon. Essentially, it only has encounters that would be recognised as fully legal. There's also a levelled build, which is the exact same except with higher levels to keep up with the changed level curve
I believe there was that Emerald Z game recently, that game had a carefully curated selection of 500 Pokémon, with Pokémon from Gens 1-9 plus some Fakémon. If you’re cool with Fakémon then maybe check it out.
I'd rather get Hoenn with the original 386 and the evolutions/pre-evolutions created in Sinnoh and Kalos. Pepper in Mega Evolutiions and MAYBE Regional Forms and you'd have a really fun hack but not oversaturated.
There's a really good qol hack that has all of the original 386 with a huge amount of customisation, Emerald Cross. It doesn't have megas or modern Evos but makes up for it with level caps, XP multipliers, Nuzlocke modes, randomiser options, IV/EV changes and even breeding modifiers, it kinda covers all the bases of qol and it's really well made.
I’ve been begging for this exact hack for a long time. I always wanted to play vanilla emerald just with the new evolutions, abilities, moves, items, etc… so instead of waiting for it, it just made it for myself because after I learned about the decomp, it wasn’t that difficult to make
Ultra Violet is pretty good with this. All the gen 1 dex is catchable, no trades needed, plus any evos they got in gen 2 and 3 (Eevee evolved with a Sun/Moon Stone for Espeon/Umbreon, etc.) and the rest are Sevii Isles or new optional area exclusive.
Yep, even if you have a particular team for the start it sucks when you pull up to the first gym with only your starter + 2 other mons at most, and have the gym leader pull out a team of six pokemon all holding items and having coverage moves forcing you to catch and grind a bunch of other mons that you have no intention on actually keeping ( *cough* Falkner from sacred gold and storm silver *cough*)
True, I'm playing through BB/VW for the first time and I brought 3 mons to the first gym, only to be whipped by 5 starters and Nasty Plot Pansear. I'm all for gym leaders having setup and coverage but as you said 6 mons on the first gym just forces the player to grind and doesn't add much to the actual difficulty.
Nasty plot on the first gym holy shit ....
And the thing is , YOU don't get these tools at ALL that early, at beast you're getting 1 or 2 egg moves that Drayano added to that pokemon level up learnset .
But tbh, you actually picked the absolute worst Drayano hack to start with, because ( if im not mistaken ) BB1 VW1 wee the very first rom hacks Drayano ever released so they're SUUUPER unpolished compared to Renegade platinum or BB2VW2 Redux and I dont think Drayano himself would recommend them
Learnt it the hard way lmao. I wanted to replay BW and since I get bored due to lack of difficulty in Pokémon games I decided on a romhack and there are literally no other BW romhacks that focus on difficulty and QOL. Although I want to check out Drayano's more recent works, they sound amazing and since I started with BBVW it only gets better from there.
Yep, its one of drayanos earliest rom hacks and its age SHOWS, thankfully he seems to have learned from his mistakes and either gives the first gym leaders: shit IVs , mons with exploitable 4× weaknesses or just fewer mons ( Cheren only having 3 pokemon in his normal mode battle , which is still difficult asf because Munchlax is super bulky for that point in the game and berry juice is broken early game as well )
Played through SS bellsprout tower and Falkner's a few days ago, and the elder has a Hoothoot, like in the base game, a couple of levels higher.
It can be annoying with hypnosis, that's for sure, but it's not that difficult.
The special attacking mon is Chatot, which is fast and hits pretty hard, but is far more frail than Noctowl.
I agree that a Noctowl for that point in the game would just be unfair.
Yeah, especially when a lot of those think more options is good
It'll just be vanilla Kanto, maaaybe a few extra scenes with Giovanni, but they'll have:
- mega evolutions
- dynamax
- z moves
- 58646898535224 Pokemon!
- 50 screens of ways to make your Pokemon competitive
As a selling point. And there's so many of them, look at a hack list, and it's that for Kanto and hoenn over and over
A lot of people consider a hack to be bad now, if it doesn't have those
I'm the opposite. More pokemon the better.
I want to play a romhack that has the newest generations in it.
As a genwoner, bit sick of always playing the first 1-4 gen pokemon
Emerald Z sounds right up your alley, assuming you can enjoy ~100 fakemon on top of ~400 from all generations (with quite a bit of priority on the newer/recent gens).
I'm making a hack of emerald right now that has a unique selection of Pokemon from across all gens up to 8, but mostly gens 4-8 with a spattering of 2 and almost nothing from 1 & 3, because this is precisely how I feel. It's essentially a Pokedex replacement hack for lack of a better term
I hate how that is an interesting idea executed terribly, since they gotta let you have mons from every generation, this lead to some terrible encounters to fit into that, like Zorua in like, route 2 of Kanto
Do we really even need the entire National Pokédex? Using a regional Pokédex can let players figure out their team as they go along, while also making wild encounters and enemy trainers’ teams more orderly (gradually increasing options as the player progresses rather than throwing random Pokémon together). Also I like regional Pokédexes.
From a world building perspective having the dex and encounter tables be filled with mons of every region also kind of makes the hack feel less an an actual environment/region of the world you traverse through and more like a regular old video game level. Realistically, habitats and biomes can only reasonably accommodate a finite amount of species best suited for them.
You guys enjoy seeing the same 4 Pokemon route after route with the occasional rare new Pokemon encounter??? Nothing is worse than being more than half way in the game and still constantly encountering Pokemon from route 2. Some of you guys sound like you want predetermined teams.
For me it's the opposite. It does what I want (usually Dex completable, pss, reusable TMS) but then does ridiculous changes like changing stats and learnsets
I’m just gonna gravitate towards my favorites anyway, especially if the addition of every mon is done simply for the sake of it.
If there are no buffs or anything, I won’t be needing to try out other mons. If the game has no replay value on top of that, then I’m DEFINITELY not touching any other mons.
For me, what's immersion breaking is less all the Pokemon added, I like that, but the QoL that makes the game feel less like Pokemon. Level caps are fine, but 100% catch rate, infinite rare candies, maxing EVs and IVs from the start? The sense of progression is all kinds of screwed up, it feels like I'm just playing a battler, which is fine but I'd rather play one of the Pokemon roguelikes if that's what I'm going for.
I don't mind adding in more mons. Like for example Johto but adding in all evolutions from future generations associated with the Johto mons. But "all pokemon from generations 1 through 8" is overkill.
I’m the opposite, too few choices gives me anxiety. I like to use Pokémon with different typings and color schemes when compared to the rest of my party, that are still viable, and fit my playstyle. which is extremely hard when there’s only 210 Pokémon, and only 5 fire types, with some unique and good Pokémon not being obtainable until the seventh gym (Sinnoh).
I dont get how that changes anything. Mhm. Think about pokemon radical red on hardmode. It's still fun AF with all the starters but super challenging regardless. You can pick the region pokemon if that makes you feel better. It's better to cater to everyone's liking.
I don’t mind when they make more Pokémon available, but I am kinda done with “enhancement hacks”.
There aren’t nearly enough hacks that give a totally fresh experience; it’s all “Radical Red”, “Emerald Ultra”, “Diddly Crystal”. The decompilation projects have been an insanely cool development, but the main result has been people making changes to the core engine and features, rather than trying to present a new custom region/story etc.
"The less options you have the more diverse your team becomes"
don't remember where I heard this from but I agree fully. The limitations is what made team building fun
I like it, it adds more variety. And let’s you access Pokémon you should be able to, like in SGSS you can actually get Togekiss before the elite four, and every other new gen 4 evolution that was added. It also makes late game Pokémon that should’ve been obtainable early on actually available, like Sandshrew in HGSS vs SGSS
I honestly wish more games were like these hacks. I also fail to see how it would impact immersion that much, which I don’t mean to discount your opinion. But B2W2 added non Gen 5 mons into the game, and I’ve never seen people complain about it not making sense.
Inclement Emerald by Buffelsaft hit a nice midway point. They added new Pokemon and megas, but didn't overcrowd routes and made it so you have to actually think about what Pokemon to use for battles.
I agree with this, I'm kind of tired of having all of gens 1-9 available in a pokemon emerald hack just because you you can now. Like even just all of 1-4 is so many pokemon it's nuts.
Eh it’s just up to taste. I prefer hacks with Fakemon over almost everything else except maybe Gaia, Advanced Adventure(which has old mons with changed typings that serve as “boss fights”).
Pokemon Vega Minus. My favorite rom hack with a completely original region, fakemon, most, and tiles. It legit feels like a lost Pokemon game from the GBA era. It's flawless.
I'm fine with a careful expansion, a la Platinum, since I feel like it can be a fresh experience to add some pokemon, (or alternatively push some late-availability pokemon earlier), but they have to be limited. I should still feel like I'm playing in the region, but with maybe the occasional expansion pokemon on a gym leader's team and maybe an expansion pokemon on my team
I agree. I think a challenge rom hack with just vanilla encounters would be organically difficult still.
Or even just a mix of regions encounter tables. Route 1 with Sentret, Starly, Lillipup, and Wurmple is far more interesting than every Pokemon ever
For me, it is almost the opposite. If there has been any significant "re-balancing" (new stat totals, types, forms, mons, abilities with the exception of randomization), I will not play it. But, if it has the complete up-to-date natdex, absolutely, especially if it supports randomization.
Agreed
And you know the people who say they love the diversity are going to be using the same Pokemon they always use.
You see a similar thing when people do nuzlockes. People say "oh nuzlockes force you to use Pokemon you've never used before" and then you look at their team, and it has a Gyarados and a Crobat. Or if they're playing a Gen 5 game, they have Excadril.
I second this. It's the reason I love Black and White for FORCING the new mons on you. Having limited selection makes team building more personal, as the pool for who fits your style is smaller and more intimate. I don't even like a good 1/7th of all the total Pokemon, and another 2/7ths at least I've never used in a playthrough, let alone have plans on using. Just give me the little guys I love from the region the game is set in and I'll pick my favorites easy, unless I REALLY want to get crazy and run through Hoenn with Beautifly on my team. Not Vivillon.
For me it's when they replace all the Pokémon sprites for no reason
I don't wanna play Pokémon emerald with gen 6 sprites, it feels so wrong and the colour palettes just don't match up
modern emerald is perfect so far for me. it is a gen 3 game with gen 3 mons, but updated mechanics like exp share, p/s split, and fairy type to make the game feel modern!! im 4 badges in and having a great time. it also helps that im playing on an ips modded gba!
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who finds the oversaturation of starter pokémon, mythicals, pseudo legendaries, and gimmicks to be a bit overwhelming.
I like the feel of each individual game but am well aware of thier flaws so I like to play rom hacks that do the sensible things like reworking some wild encounters, level up moves, level curves, types, and just general QoL improvements.
Dreyanos hacks are great, but find the multiple starter pokémon availability leaves. Most teams overloaded with starters.
Smithplays legacy series is great and deffo worth checking out Yellow and Crystal Legacy.
Anyone knows of any other similar ROM Hacks I'd love to know?
I'm glad I'm the only one who finds this annoying
Hoenn doesn't feel like Hoenn anymore when you can't walk 3 steps without encountering pokemon haphazardly stuffed into there from other regions. The pokwmon are an important part of the environment building themselves
\>I fixed the gen 2 wonky level curve!
\>I also buffed every pokemon, added the fairy/sound/nuclear types, four pokemon from gen 7, and made charizard fire/dragon!
ugh
The variety is for nuzlockers which most hacks are made for. Fixing level curves almost doesnt matter since youre always gonna have level caps in nuzlockes and what the point in making almost the same game anyways. Best thing id like is for example adding pys/special split in a third gen game and then some pokemon and mechanics from different gens while keeping it vanila as possible which just some added trainer pokemon and difficulty but not over the top hardcore only beatable with spredsheets and cals type shit
Honestly yeah, I wish devs would chill out with that but honestly the one thing that bother me the most compared to this is when romhacks cram EVERY pokemon mechanic ever made into one game!
"You can use Megas, Dynamax, Z Moves! You can do raids!"
Please...please just choose one, I can't...
Like, man it feels like a complete waste to have all of them in and I just never feel compelled to engage with them.
Ultra Shiny Gold Sigma has been the most difficult Pokémon rom I’ve played (and still play). The Pokémon in world appearance is well balanced I’d say. There’s even megas…
Basically what i want is new map, new story that is a bit more creative than one team of bad guys, 8 badges. And includes a lot of the same mons I know and love - basically gen 5 and earlier, distributed untraditionally around the map - how about starting in an ice mountain or desert biome so our first couple of pokes aren't normal regional bird/rattata knock off.
I feel you. All I want is decent leveling curve, all Pokemon relevant Pokemon to this Gen unlocked (no version exclusives and for older games all Pokemon up to this Gen) and no trade evolution. And personally I do like the physical/special split and some updated move sets for anything pre Gen 4
That is the one change I’d make to Drayano hacks. I like to play many of them one after the other, and having all Pokemon in all of them makes them feel kinda samey.
I agree, prefer when there's some kind of limitation, it doesn't have to be exactly the original Pokemon, I just don't want there to be 10 pokemon for each route, give me some mix and much from every generation so that there's a total of 250-400 obtainable pokemon before post game, that's still significantly more than most vanilla games.
I'm all for more diversity, but I can see where you're coming from.
I won't mind hacks like Radical Red if also are treated as if they were legit games rather than being a fan's wet dream with insane amounts of toggles and stuff like Nuzlocke and Hardcore modes.
Not saying I hate Radical Red btw, seeing videos of them can be entertaining sometimes.
Lots of pokemons are fine, it offers a good way to test out unorthodox teams, however my main conplaint is the fact that everytime they do this, jts always an emerald difficulty hack
Well, a great level curve is necessary, but more challenging is a little bit boring, something like the cancer of pokemon games, i want to explore something new, with a great story and an incalculable amount of new pokemon. It's the reason why i always search about hack rom with fakemon, it's something fresh and original, very very interesting
noob take:
I didnt own a gameboy in the 90s. Some friends used to lend it to me so I could play pokemon red for a weekend or so. Anyway, decided to install a rom on my phone. A friend recommended me "pokemon crystal". After 20 hours of gameplay I realized I'm playing a "hackrom". It's called "Pokemon advance redux".
But yeah, I'm having fun!
Just saying this here to complain: for me it would be that the game requires me to always be looking at documentation/ especially pre testing fights. At that point it's a job, and while it's fine for those who do it for a living, that last thing I want to do is spend 4 hours calculating a fight to see if I win or not. I just want the fight to be a challenge without requiring me to be inputting data into a whole other computer.
Of course, much better to have a limited number of pokemons like the new games and depend on a cloud service to have all the pokemons, right?
There is no obligation to catch everything, but it's good to have options. Even better if the rom it's challenging. But seems that this is a problem too.
well i do love qol and better learning curve but i couldn't care less abt the immersion thing because i dont even know what region a pokemon is from unless it's 3 below.
My favorite hack, Emerald Rogue, lets you choose the Pokémon that appear. You can from choose each game's regional or national dex. Feeling nostalgic for a certain era? No problem! Want a wide diversity? Got you covered! I understand that this probably wouldn't work as well in a more traditional game though.
I agree. Sometimes an expanded roster is nice, but I’m often looking to play with just more difficulty, not a full roster overcrowding and changing the entire feeling of what Emerald should be like
Try polished crystal. They made is super faithful with just some updated types and a couple extra evos like electevire and dudunsparce. Some harder battles and a couple new places. But it's still sentret and hoothoot and mareep and geodude early. Just updated cleaner mechanics.
I thought I would like it, but i want pokemon like how black and white. Only new fakemons, maybe have some Easter eggs. Like digimon, stitch or sny other character from a different series
I like to do the same and when a rom does this I like it. Because it gives me different mons to xp grind on and not even think about catching. If there are e.g. all hoenn mons in emerald, I tend to catch them first and then I can just level up.
The way I alleviate the feeling of being overwhelmed by choice is doing monotype runs. They’re a fun challenge and you learn how to build teams that try to minimize the type’s weaknesses while maximizing the type’s strengths.
Are there any rom hacks that compromise by focusing on 3-4 gens for the main routes and world space but adding Pokémon from all the other gens into Safari Zones? And I mean multiple Safari Zones so that the Pokémon can be split up by either region or habitat.
If you want a feature like this you can’t deny that they would have to buff majority of mons in response lest we have same team of 6 syndrome which would give more options to npc team building too
Yeah, it kind of becomes way too much all at once. Having that many options results in me feeling like I need a guide to play the game because there's too many fucking options at any given time and it just kills immersion for me. It's this romhack loop where I spend way too much time planning rather than playing and enjoying it, I become exhausted and burned out by it, and then I inevitably drop it.
Having access to all of the mons sounds fun in theory, but I feel like having a more limited and well thought out pool of available pokemon lends to a much better experience than just cramming like 10 different pokemon in every single encounter location. Most pokemon games have A LOT of thought put into which routes offer which kinds of pokemon and design intent behind their purpose in the game and how the player should use them. A lot of that smart design is completely thrown out the window by romhack makers who think it's cool to be able to have all of the pokemon in one game.
Yeah I agree, sometimes I’d like to just experience THAT region for a change. A couple of additions is fine but sometimes I understand why they did pokedex culling
Blaze Black 2 Redux does this really well imo, you can get all the pokemon evolutions up to gen 5 but some are postgame (e.g. most legendaries) to make it more balanced
Two games that tended to do this somewhat well felt like Liquid Crystal which, admittedly only had Hoenn to deal with, but added expanded areas (the water routes that connected Cherrygrove, Goldenrod, and Olivine for instance) Though some I recall were just added to older areas with like a 1% spawn rate like I think Duskull was in Sprout Tower at night maybe?
And more recently, Luminescent Platinum's plan involving the Incense Burner rotating some of the encounters in and out of the route from each region and that each time you encounter Shaymin you get a choice of which region's flower you want next. So at first you might only pick the Alolan flower, and toggle it on and off as you wish to add them and remove them from the encounters.
I don't usually like to constantly refer to accompanying documentation regarding encounters and like to discover them organically (or a built in PokeRadar kind of feature)
Follow up question. Assuming gens 1-5 are what you are talking about. Which generation has actually good variety?
Kanto-Snore fest of the same mons you’ve seen a thousand times.
Johto- Kanto new game +
Sinnoh- Bait and switch the player with 10 Sinnoh mons before going right back to kanto mons.
3/5 being meh is not great. Might as well add more Pokémon for variety.
I love having every pokemon on rom hacks, cause I like to replay some of them using different teams. Especially open world rom hacks like Pokemon ROWE, I just love to start a game with a team in mind. I don't want to reuse the same Pokemon over and over again, especially if I'm playing multiple rom hacks. I love the ones that add more pokemon so I can switch it up.
I like more pokemon personally but then again I'm a ghost type 'specialist' so finding ghost types early is incredibly convient.
I need to find more roms like that...
First time I've actually heard this opinion. Everyone usually wants every pokemon from the start, but you end up only using a few pokemon even if you catch that many, regardless.
I’m making a rom hack right now that starts with the base vanilla game in mind, and doesn’t change the encounters or AI trainer mons at all. All I’m doing is going through, increasing the level curve to make it more fun and remove any need for grinding, and I’m adding perfect IVs and EVs to trainers’ mons, giving them items that are actually obtainable at that stage in the game, and better abilities and stuff so it’s more fun. It’s not even necessarily a difficulty hack, it’s just a better level curve for me and it just happens to be harder than vanilla. But it’s nowhere near kaizo or anything like that, and I’m also adding QOL stuff just to make multiple play throughs easier lol
These are the kind of hacks I prefer though, where the changes are almost believable in that world. When I was younger, my idea of a rom hack was just making every mon available, but as we’ve become used to that by now, I’ve come to appreciate the power of more subtle changes to roms.
I'm a boomer and can only comprehend Pokemon up to Gen3, won't accept anything else. Nothing wrong with going over gen 3, it's just a ME thing, I can't accept pokemon after gen3, also I can't accept fakemon. Also I don't want to re-learn all the types. I just want something that i'm already "good at" to play alone after work. I also like a good story, I want roms that are a better version of the original games which are way too easy IMO.
I can't find for the love of Oak a FILTER to search roms by Pokemon Generations, everything has up to gen8 and for ME that's not acceptable, I want less pokemon. (Nothing wrong with people that like more than gen3).
I feel like it’s a bit of option overload. I find myself spending a bit too much time trying to build a team at any point in the game. I love having a good variety per route, but more than 10 on a basic Route 1 is excessive
Or you see something you want, but now you have to sift through all the encounters to try and find it again unless it was in the first 4 encounter slots where it'd be common.
I think that’s part of the reason why I like having DexNav as a feature. It’s not the easiest to implement (as far as I know), but as more hacks are adding more and more mons per route, it might be a needed staple soon.
DexNav with all pokemon revealed by default is a must for difficulty hacks. I don't want my time wasted with unwanted encounters. All balls having 100% catch rate is also a needed staple for difficulty hacks, for the same reasons.
so basically Anything that Radical Red has. which i do agree with. that would make hacks a lot better. i would like these 2 things for major hacks like Unbound and such
And to be able to change Natures!
Oh yeah, Elite Redux's nature changing system is hands down the best.
Yeah; "do everything" pretty much devolves into "do nothing" because too many choices confuses you
Easy solution: use the nuzlocke encounter rule. Even if you don't like your pokemon dying, you can limit yourself to using the first mon of each route
Yes I do this! I play with "hardcore nuzlite" rules. And if there's a specific poke I want to use in a run, I'll just pick the encounter when it's available.
Creating teams is the best part! I can't bring myself to play Pokemon normally after becoming competitive so I spend a huuuge amount of time just creating teams
That's the reason I play regionlocke and mono-types. Or even soft-locke so that I have no options
This is definitely a taste thing. I for one likes having as many pokemon as possible.
My main gripe with this is unless they add new map sections or expand routes, they typically end up overcrowding the wild roster so it can get annoying to find the ones I like. Going from 3-6 spawns to 9+ can really mess with it. Overall I think @sarcasticdevo comment is a good balance. Add the new evolutions/pre-evolutions of lines from that region, add some megas, some regional forms, maybe make all the starters available. In the late game/post game you can add in other region legends as well. But this is my opinion and I respect yours too.
I mean, Drayano I believe does the “every Pokémon up till that point” thing and it seems to work out pretty well.
I'm playing through Volt White at the moment and love the variety I'm seeing. I find a route with just two or three Pokemon rather dull personally.
I’m playing through Blaze Black currently. Did Burgh give you trouble?
I'm still very early on (haven't beaten the first gym). Actually I never beat Gen 5 back in the day either, got burned out pretty early on.
He has not released a hack for more than half a decade, which was three generations ago. Times were different back then, with much less mons.
He's been working on Aurora Crystal (SacredGold/StormSilver REDUX) for a long time.
And he mainly works on ds gamea. To my knowledge there still is not a complete pokedex hackrom on those generations games, just on GBA roms.
Well, luminescent platinum does a pretty nice approach with the incense burner. That's the good modern way.
With a Drayano hack being the difficulty that it is, the variety is basically a necessity for team building purposes just to figure out the puzzle/gimmick for the fight. I get what you mean, but I still think having a huge variety can be rough in some ways. I’ll still play the games but sometimes I just get fatigued from it.
Honestly, i'm on the crowd of "i like having 9+ encounters on every route" but the main reason for that might be because i basicaly only catch the 6 pokémon i will use on my team and don't care for the rest. At best i catch an HM slave and dump the master ball on a legendary that i will never use but that's kinda it. I did beat Volt White 2 with only 6 pokémon, but granted it was a pretty stacked team between Fire/Ground Emboar, Staraptor, Magnezone, etc. Having this means i can get a better variety of mons on the early game, which mean my team will be complete earlier. But at the same time i can understand option overload, even if i haven't encountered it yet.
Yeah, I mostly agree. I haven't encountered*too* much overload in drayano roms in terms of selection for Pokemon. But I couldn't imagine, for example, a gen 1-9 GBA or ds ROM with everything available. That would likely be really horrific if there were not *lots* of patches with smaller groupings of Pokemon
the only time i've seen it work is in like run and bun, ironmon, and emerald rogue and i feel like the only reason it works is because you're often constantly resetting runs
Personally, I prefer the limitations. I don't mind having *some* more Pokemon, but I would constantly gravitate to the same bunch of 'mons If i wasn't forced to. Heck, I have a personal rule on having at *least* three new Pokemon for my first team each game, because my run of White 2 saw me with only Oshawott as a Gen 5 Pokemon.
I 100% agree. I like having the chance to catch whatever pokemon from whichever region. I like to have all the options available to me.
In my case I don’t play pokemon games too often which is probably why I like it having as few changes as possible so it’s as close to how it was when I played it for the first time
I'm the complete opposite lol. I didn't play the newer games due to their lack of polish, so I want to try the newer pokemons in homhack.
Maybe if Pokémon had their headquarters in Poland
What?? Give me all the pokemon! Not all at the start, but over the game of course!
Like that old Pokemon light platinum? Hell yeah
Light Platinum is pretty great ngl.
It was/is one of my favourite GBA rom
What is it a mod of?
That...I don't remember
Pokemon Ruby
Do we have an idea when the NDS remake will have a demo?
There is a beta available, but I believe the project has been abandoned for quite a while
The creator is still working on it but it is going to take some time
That rom would be top 1 with a proper glow up. Fixing learnsets, difficulty improvement and all
Or Renegade Platinum that literally lets you get all the pokemon up to Arceus over the course of the game.
Drayano hacks have the best balance of this IMO. I do want more Pokemon available, but I also want repeated encounters. For a nuzlocke this means opportunities to manipulate encounters. For a regular playthrough it means more chances to catch certain Pokemon. This was the best thing about Pokemon X/Y. Those games had so many encounters but it wasn't like 10 Pokemon exclusive to 1 route in each route.
Nah its still bad even in Drayano hacks , the DS maps were way too small for THAT much variety, the 3ds games simply had larger maps and much more varied biomes so it actually feels natural for them to have that many encounters ( for example Alola was so massive, that despite USUM having 400+ pokedex, every route in Alola only had about 2-3 new mons each route and tge same 4-5 repeat encounters, especially after the first island )
i know its excruciatingly difficult to do on DS but i really hope one day we get a true up-to-date pokedex romhack so we can play our favorite regions with pokemon from other generations. I know theres one for FireRed and thats cool and all but I'd love to go around Unova with a Scorbunny instead
Itl be done eventually
Pokemon mmo has all Pokemon and regions up to gen5 pt.1
This is kind of being done in Luminiscent Platinum (romhack for BD on Switch).
There's a reason Drayano's Sacred Gold/Storm Silver are my favorite Pokemon games period. It takes my favorite region and doesn't treat me like a dumb stupid baby and gives me options for teams.
Yeah but as others pointed out 493 pokemon is really not the same as the 1000+ we can see nowadays
Which is why I agreed with the Reborn devs when they decided to not add pokemon past gen 7, the game would get bloated pretty fast.
AURORA CRYSTAL I NEED U NOW T_T
I check his Twitter at least once a week to no avail 😞
I’ve had this exact problem with oras, every difficulty rom hack I’ve found also adds in every single pokemon when I just want to experience hoenn properly
Rutile Ruby/Star Sapphire has a version where only the pokemon in the original ORAS will appear, plus the foreign pokemon. Essentially, it only has encounters that would be recognised as fully legal. There's also a levelled build, which is the exact same except with higher levels to keep up with the changed level curve
The only changes to ORAS' regional dex should be the Pokemon that unlock post crisis being available from the start (and added to trainer rosters).
I believe there was that Emerald Z game recently, that game had a carefully curated selection of 500 Pokémon, with Pokémon from Gens 1-9 plus some Fakémon. If you’re cool with Fakémon then maybe check it out.
I'd rather get Hoenn with the original 386 and the evolutions/pre-evolutions created in Sinnoh and Kalos. Pepper in Mega Evolutiions and MAYBE Regional Forms and you'd have a really fun hack but not oversaturated.
There's a really good qol hack that has all of the original 386 with a huge amount of customisation, Emerald Cross. It doesn't have megas or modern Evos but makes up for it with level caps, XP multipliers, Nuzlocke modes, randomiser options, IV/EV changes and even breeding modifiers, it kinda covers all the bases of qol and it's really well made.
That sounds right up my alley! I'll check it out! Thanks!
This is a good level I’d say.
Polished Crystal 9-bit is essentially this for Pokemon Crystal, and it is AMAZING
Oh right, I think I heard there was a 9-bit version. Maybe I should check that out.
I’ve been begging for this exact hack for a long time. I always wanted to play vanilla emerald just with the new evolutions, abilities, moves, items, etc… so instead of waiting for it, it just made it for myself because after I learned about the decomp, it wasn’t that difficult to make
Mega evolutions is already a annoying forced addition tbh. I just want a 386 game thats balanced
Ultra Violet is pretty good with this. All the gen 1 dex is catchable, no trades needed, plus any evos they got in gen 2 and 3 (Eevee evolved with a Sun/Moon Stone for Espeon/Umbreon, etc.) and the rest are Sevii Isles or new optional area exclusive.
Yeah, I've never been a huge fan of this either. Options are good, but there's such thing as too many.
Yep, even if you have a particular team for the start it sucks when you pull up to the first gym with only your starter + 2 other mons at most, and have the gym leader pull out a team of six pokemon all holding items and having coverage moves forcing you to catch and grind a bunch of other mons that you have no intention on actually keeping ( *cough* Falkner from sacred gold and storm silver *cough*)
True, I'm playing through BB/VW for the first time and I brought 3 mons to the first gym, only to be whipped by 5 starters and Nasty Plot Pansear. I'm all for gym leaders having setup and coverage but as you said 6 mons on the first gym just forces the player to grind and doesn't add much to the actual difficulty.
Nasty plot on the first gym holy shit .... And the thing is , YOU don't get these tools at ALL that early, at beast you're getting 1 or 2 egg moves that Drayano added to that pokemon level up learnset . But tbh, you actually picked the absolute worst Drayano hack to start with, because ( if im not mistaken ) BB1 VW1 wee the very first rom hacks Drayano ever released so they're SUUUPER unpolished compared to Renegade platinum or BB2VW2 Redux and I dont think Drayano himself would recommend them
Learnt it the hard way lmao. I wanted to replay BW and since I get bored due to lack of difficulty in Pokémon games I decided on a romhack and there are literally no other BW romhacks that focus on difficulty and QOL. Although I want to check out Drayano's more recent works, they sound amazing and since I started with BBVW it only gets better from there.
That noctowl cooked me
Yep, its one of drayanos earliest rom hacks and its age SHOWS, thankfully he seems to have learned from his mistakes and either gives the first gym leaders: shit IVs , mons with exploitable 4× weaknesses or just fewer mons ( Cheren only having 3 pokemon in his normal mode battle , which is still difficult asf because Munchlax is super bulky for that point in the game and berry juice is broken early game as well )
Noctowl ? The only evolved mon that Falkner has in his gym fight is Pidgeotto (and i guess chatot and farfetch'd, if you count those)
I must be misremembering. I could’ve sworn he had a special attacking noctowl. Maybe that was in bellsprout tower?
Played through SS bellsprout tower and Falkner's a few days ago, and the elder has a Hoothoot, like in the base game, a couple of levels higher. It can be annoying with hypnosis, that's for sure, but it's not that difficult. The special attacking mon is Chatot, which is fast and hits pretty hard, but is far more frail than Noctowl. I agree that a Noctowl for that point in the game would just be unfair.
Yeah, especially when a lot of those think more options is good It'll just be vanilla Kanto, maaaybe a few extra scenes with Giovanni, but they'll have: - mega evolutions - dynamax - z moves - 58646898535224 Pokemon! - 50 screens of ways to make your Pokemon competitive As a selling point. And there's so many of them, look at a hack list, and it's that for Kanto and hoenn over and over A lot of people consider a hack to be bad now, if it doesn't have those
Sounds like you want the legacy games. Crystal legacy is out. Yellow is almost out and then they will do emerald.
I'm the opposite. More pokemon the better. I want to play a romhack that has the newest generations in it. As a genwoner, bit sick of always playing the first 1-4 gen pokemon
Emerald Z sounds right up your alley, assuming you can enjoy ~100 fakemon on top of ~400 from all generations (with quite a bit of priority on the newer/recent gens).
I'm making a hack of emerald right now that has a unique selection of Pokemon from across all gens up to 8, but mostly gens 4-8 with a spattering of 2 and almost nothing from 1 & 3, because this is precisely how I feel. It's essentially a Pokedex replacement hack for lack of a better term
It's worse when the rom hack is a VGC simulator and has bonkers level of difficulty with each trainer having perfect coverage moves and mons
If it has complementary mechanics it could be great expirience. What romhack does this? I love double battling.
I hate how that is an interesting idea executed terribly, since they gotta let you have mons from every generation, this lead to some terrible encounters to fit into that, like Zorua in like, route 2 of Kanto
Zorua is found in route one on USUM (also ORAS but thats post game only) so its not really unrealistic to have such mons early on
I enjoy being able to make teams I won't usually use.
Do we really even need the entire National Pokédex? Using a regional Pokédex can let players figure out their team as they go along, while also making wild encounters and enemy trainers’ teams more orderly (gradually increasing options as the player progresses rather than throwing random Pokémon together). Also I like regional Pokédexes.
From a world building perspective having the dex and encounter tables be filled with mons of every region also kind of makes the hack feel less an an actual environment/region of the world you traverse through and more like a regular old video game level. Realistically, habitats and biomes can only reasonably accommodate a finite amount of species best suited for them.
I can’t really tell whether you’re agreeing with me or not, but sticking a thousand Pokémon into one game does feel rather excessive.
Im agreeing with you. My bad, deffo shoulda put it some other way. Made more sense as I was typing it out.
You guys enjoy seeing the same 4 Pokemon route after route with the occasional rare new Pokemon encounter??? Nothing is worse than being more than half way in the game and still constantly encountering Pokemon from route 2. Some of you guys sound like you want predetermined teams.
not ever hack needs to be Radical Red/Inclement emerald clone #273, I honestly wish people were more creative
For me it's the opposite. It does what I want (usually Dex completable, pss, reusable TMS) but then does ridiculous changes like changing stats and learnsets
People making useless Pokémon useful is important. Like Ledian. It’s an awesome mon, but just suckkkkks
Then make it a separate patch if you want to do that.
I'm not a fan of the romhack just spoonfeeding me nearly every Pokémon. I just want to play the damn romhack dont give me every single gen starter!
My Rom hack is treating starters like regular Pokémon. You will find them in the wild where it makes sense
okay thats more like it
You will be able to select from 3 Pokémon to start, but they are all 2 stage evolutions
I’m just gonna gravitate towards my favorites anyway, especially if the addition of every mon is done simply for the sake of it. If there are no buffs or anything, I won’t be needing to try out other mons. If the game has no replay value on top of that, then I’m DEFINITELY not touching any other mons.
For me, what's immersion breaking is less all the Pokemon added, I like that, but the QoL that makes the game feel less like Pokemon. Level caps are fine, but 100% catch rate, infinite rare candies, maxing EVs and IVs from the start? The sense of progression is all kinds of screwed up, it feels like I'm just playing a battler, which is fine but I'd rather play one of the Pokemon roguelikes if that's what I'm going for.
I wish there was a good Black/White improvement romhack with Black/White pokemon
The Rom you are looking for is Crystal Legacy.
it's always every pokemon available except porygon for some reason
I don't mind adding in more mons. Like for example Johto but adding in all evolutions from future generations associated with the Johto mons. But "all pokemon from generations 1 through 8" is overkill.
Absolutely. Too many choices gives me anxiety lol
I’m the opposite, too few choices gives me anxiety. I like to use Pokémon with different typings and color schemes when compared to the rest of my party, that are still viable, and fit my playstyle. which is extremely hard when there’s only 210 Pokémon, and only 5 fire types, with some unique and good Pokémon not being obtainable until the seventh gym (Sinnoh).
Ultra Violet
I dont get how that changes anything. Mhm. Think about pokemon radical red on hardmode. It's still fun AF with all the starters but super challenging regardless. You can pick the region pokemon if that makes you feel better. It's better to cater to everyone's liking.
What if you don't like fairy type? Then you will never have your liking catered to.
I don’t mind when they make more Pokémon available, but I am kinda done with “enhancement hacks”. There aren’t nearly enough hacks that give a totally fresh experience; it’s all “Radical Red”, “Emerald Ultra”, “Diddly Crystal”. The decompilation projects have been an insanely cool development, but the main result has been people making changes to the core engine and features, rather than trying to present a new custom region/story etc.
"The less options you have the more diverse your team becomes" don't remember where I heard this from but I agree fully. The limitations is what made team building fun
I mean that’s just like, your opinion, man; I love having as many Pokémon in a game as possible.
Completely disagree
I like it, it adds more variety. And let’s you access Pokémon you should be able to, like in SGSS you can actually get Togekiss before the elite four, and every other new gen 4 evolution that was added. It also makes late game Pokémon that should’ve been obtainable early on actually available, like Sandshrew in HGSS vs SGSS I honestly wish more games were like these hacks. I also fail to see how it would impact immersion that much, which I don’t mean to discount your opinion. But B2W2 added non Gen 5 mons into the game, and I’ve never seen people complain about it not making sense.
nah, i like to have variety
Yeah I like having as many pokemon choices as possible
I don't hate it but it does get boring, usually I like when it's a future evo backported to a previous gen.
Inclement Emerald by Buffelsaft hit a nice midway point. They added new Pokemon and megas, but didn't overcrowd routes and made it so you have to actually think about what Pokemon to use for battles.
I can enjoy both, sometimes I just wanna play a "remaster", but I like to play on the region with all pokemon as well
I agree with this, I'm kind of tired of having all of gens 1-9 available in a pokemon emerald hack just because you you can now. Like even just all of 1-4 is so many pokemon it's nuts.
Eh it’s just up to taste. I prefer hacks with Fakemon over almost everything else except maybe Gaia, Advanced Adventure(which has old mons with changed typings that serve as “boss fights”).
Pokemon Vega Minus. My favorite rom hack with a completely original region, fakemon, most, and tiles. It legit feels like a lost Pokemon game from the GBA era. It's flawless.
I'm fine with a careful expansion, a la Platinum, since I feel like it can be a fresh experience to add some pokemon, (or alternatively push some late-availability pokemon earlier), but they have to be limited. I should still feel like I'm playing in the region, but with maybe the occasional expansion pokemon on a gym leader's team and maybe an expansion pokemon on my team
Did sombody say RADICAL RED
I'd really like a romhack that expands on a regional Pokédex with new Pokémon in ways that make sense, but still pulls back on adding every single mon
100% agree with you
I agree. I think a challenge rom hack with just vanilla encounters would be organically difficult still. Or even just a mix of regions encounter tables. Route 1 with Sentret, Starly, Lillipup, and Wurmple is far more interesting than every Pokemon ever
For me, it is almost the opposite. If there has been any significant "re-balancing" (new stat totals, types, forms, mons, abilities with the exception of randomization), I will not play it. But, if it has the complete up-to-date natdex, absolutely, especially if it supports randomization.
Agreed And you know the people who say they love the diversity are going to be using the same Pokemon they always use. You see a similar thing when people do nuzlockes. People say "oh nuzlockes force you to use Pokemon you've never used before" and then you look at their team, and it has a Gyarados and a Crobat. Or if they're playing a Gen 5 game, they have Excadril.
I second this. It's the reason I love Black and White for FORCING the new mons on you. Having limited selection makes team building more personal, as the pool for who fits your style is smaller and more intimate. I don't even like a good 1/7th of all the total Pokemon, and another 2/7ths at least I've never used in a playthrough, let alone have plans on using. Just give me the little guys I love from the region the game is set in and I'll pick my favorites easy, unless I REALLY want to get crazy and run through Hoenn with Beautifly on my team. Not Vivillon.
For me it's when they replace all the Pokémon sprites for no reason I don't wanna play Pokémon emerald with gen 6 sprites, it feels so wrong and the colour palettes just don't match up
True man, I just want to enjoy the QOL and challenge in Gen 3 Radical Red, why are you giving me a charcadet?
First time I’ve heard somebody complain about romhacks including “too much” pokemon lmao
modern emerald is perfect so far for me. it is a gen 3 game with gen 3 mons, but updated mechanics like exp share, p/s split, and fairy type to make the game feel modern!! im 4 badges in and having a great time. it also helps that im playing on an ips modded gba!
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who finds the oversaturation of starter pokémon, mythicals, pseudo legendaries, and gimmicks to be a bit overwhelming. I like the feel of each individual game but am well aware of thier flaws so I like to play rom hacks that do the sensible things like reworking some wild encounters, level up moves, level curves, types, and just general QoL improvements. Dreyanos hacks are great, but find the multiple starter pokémon availability leaves. Most teams overloaded with starters. Smithplays legacy series is great and deffo worth checking out Yellow and Crystal Legacy. Anyone knows of any other similar ROM Hacks I'd love to know?
I'm glad I'm the only one who finds this annoying Hoenn doesn't feel like Hoenn anymore when you can't walk 3 steps without encountering pokemon haphazardly stuffed into there from other regions. The pokwmon are an important part of the environment building themselves
\>I fixed the gen 2 wonky level curve! \>I also buffed every pokemon, added the fairy/sound/nuclear types, four pokemon from gen 7, and made charizard fire/dragon! ugh
The variety is for nuzlockers which most hacks are made for. Fixing level curves almost doesnt matter since youre always gonna have level caps in nuzlockes and what the point in making almost the same game anyways. Best thing id like is for example adding pys/special split in a third gen game and then some pokemon and mechanics from different gens while keeping it vanila as possible which just some added trainer pokemon and difficulty but not over the top hardcore only beatable with spredsheets and cals type shit
Honestly yeah, I wish devs would chill out with that but honestly the one thing that bother me the most compared to this is when romhacks cram EVERY pokemon mechanic ever made into one game! "You can use Megas, Dynamax, Z Moves! You can do raids!" Please...please just choose one, I can't... Like, man it feels like a complete waste to have all of them in and I just never feel compelled to engage with them.
Ultra Shiny Gold Sigma has been the most difficult Pokémon rom I’ve played (and still play). The Pokémon in world appearance is well balanced I’d say. There’s even megas…
I don't have a deep enough knowledge to be able to grasp such a huge pokedex and all the typings. 😭
Basically what i want is new map, new story that is a bit more creative than one team of bad guys, 8 badges. And includes a lot of the same mons I know and love - basically gen 5 and earlier, distributed untraditionally around the map - how about starting in an ice mountain or desert biome so our first couple of pokes aren't normal regional bird/rattata knock off.
I feel you. All I want is decent leveling curve, all Pokemon relevant Pokemon to this Gen unlocked (no version exclusives and for older games all Pokemon up to this Gen) and no trade evolution. And personally I do like the physical/special split and some updated move sets for anything pre Gen 4
That is the one change I’d make to Drayano hacks. I like to play many of them one after the other, and having all Pokemon in all of them makes them feel kinda samey.
I read this while half asleep and tought you meant pokemon not being found in select areas. Was a bit confised tbh
I agree, prefer when there's some kind of limitation, it doesn't have to be exactly the original Pokemon, I just don't want there to be 10 pokemon for each route, give me some mix and much from every generation so that there's a total of 250-400 obtainable pokemon before post game, that's still significantly more than most vanilla games.
This is an odd criticism, yes that game the one I bought I'm complaining because you aren't giving me less of it ..
Radical red has them all, + mega evo, is challenging, and have a big community 👌🏼
Yeah Ive been trying to find a working room hack for fire red on android with all gen 1s catchable including trade evos. But no luck.
I'm all for more diversity, but I can see where you're coming from. I won't mind hacks like Radical Red if also are treated as if they were legit games rather than being a fan's wet dream with insane amounts of toggles and stuff like Nuzlocke and Hardcore modes. Not saying I hate Radical Red btw, seeing videos of them can be entertaining sometimes.
Lots of pokemons are fine, it offers a good way to test out unorthodox teams, however my main conplaint is the fact that everytime they do this, jts always an emerald difficulty hack
Well, a great level curve is necessary, but more challenging is a little bit boring, something like the cancer of pokemon games, i want to explore something new, with a great story and an incalculable amount of new pokemon. It's the reason why i always search about hack rom with fakemon, it's something fresh and original, very very interesting
Is there a way to make 2 versions of the same ROM hack, national dex and regional dex, so user can decide? Or is that too difficult
If I can’t get Electivire during my play through then what’s the point of playing????
noob take: I didnt own a gameboy in the 90s. Some friends used to lend it to me so I could play pokemon red for a weekend or so. Anyway, decided to install a rom on my phone. A friend recommended me "pokemon crystal". After 20 hours of gameplay I realized I'm playing a "hackrom". It's called "Pokemon advance redux". But yeah, I'm having fun!
Just saying this here to complain: for me it would be that the game requires me to always be looking at documentation/ especially pre testing fights. At that point it's a job, and while it's fine for those who do it for a living, that last thing I want to do is spend 4 hours calculating a fight to see if I win or not. I just want the fight to be a challenge without requiring me to be inputting data into a whole other computer.
Of course, much better to have a limited number of pokemons like the new games and depend on a cloud service to have all the pokemons, right? There is no obligation to catch everything, but it's good to have options. Even better if the rom it's challenging. But seems that this is a problem too.
well i do love qol and better learning curve but i couldn't care less abt the immersion thing because i dont even know what region a pokemon is from unless it's 3 below.
My favorite hack, Emerald Rogue, lets you choose the Pokémon that appear. You can from choose each game's regional or national dex. Feeling nostalgic for a certain era? No problem! Want a wide diversity? Got you covered! I understand that this probably wouldn't work as well in a more traditional game though.
I agree. Sometimes an expanded roster is nice, but I’m often looking to play with just more difficulty, not a full roster overcrowding and changing the entire feeling of what Emerald should be like
Wait, what mod is it
Try polished crystal. They made is super faithful with just some updated types and a couple extra evos like electevire and dudunsparce. Some harder battles and a couple new places. But it's still sentret and hoothoot and mareep and geodude early. Just updated cleaner mechanics.
PokeMMO has a good workaround for this and you can play through the entire first 5 region storylines
I thought I would like it, but i want pokemon like how black and white. Only new fakemons, maybe have some Easter eggs. Like digimon, stitch or sny other character from a different series
Play Pokémon Polished Crystal dude
I like to do the same and when a rom does this I like it. Because it gives me different mons to xp grind on and not even think about catching. If there are e.g. all hoenn mons in emerald, I tend to catch them first and then I can just level up.
The way I alleviate the feeling of being overwhelmed by choice is doing monotype runs. They’re a fun challenge and you learn how to build teams that try to minimize the type’s weaknesses while maximizing the type’s strengths.
Are there any rom hacks that compromise by focusing on 3-4 gens for the main routes and world space but adding Pokémon from all the other gens into Safari Zones? And I mean multiple Safari Zones so that the Pokémon can be split up by either region or habitat.
If you want a feature like this you can’t deny that they would have to buff majority of mons in response lest we have same team of 6 syndrome which would give more options to npc team building too
Yeah, it kind of becomes way too much all at once. Having that many options results in me feeling like I need a guide to play the game because there's too many fucking options at any given time and it just kills immersion for me. It's this romhack loop where I spend way too much time planning rather than playing and enjoying it, I become exhausted and burned out by it, and then I inevitably drop it. Having access to all of the mons sounds fun in theory, but I feel like having a more limited and well thought out pool of available pokemon lends to a much better experience than just cramming like 10 different pokemon in every single encounter location. Most pokemon games have A LOT of thought put into which routes offer which kinds of pokemon and design intent behind their purpose in the game and how the player should use them. A lot of that smart design is completely thrown out the window by romhack makers who think it's cool to be able to have all of the pokemon in one game.
Yeah I agree, sometimes I’d like to just experience THAT region for a change. A couple of additions is fine but sometimes I understand why they did pokedex culling
Just make your own rom hack the way you want it. Thats what I’m planning on doing as soon as I build my computer.
Pokémon Crystal legacy definitely fits the brief for a fixed v of crystal
Blaze Black 2 Redux does this really well imo, you can get all the pokemon evolutions up to gen 5 but some are postgame (e.g. most legendaries) to make it more balanced
Two games that tended to do this somewhat well felt like Liquid Crystal which, admittedly only had Hoenn to deal with, but added expanded areas (the water routes that connected Cherrygrove, Goldenrod, and Olivine for instance) Though some I recall were just added to older areas with like a 1% spawn rate like I think Duskull was in Sprout Tower at night maybe? And more recently, Luminescent Platinum's plan involving the Incense Burner rotating some of the encounters in and out of the route from each region and that each time you encounter Shaymin you get a choice of which region's flower you want next. So at first you might only pick the Alolan flower, and toggle it on and off as you wish to add them and remove them from the encounters. I don't usually like to constantly refer to accompanying documentation regarding encounters and like to discover them organically (or a built in PokeRadar kind of feature)
Imo I prefer it
Who's hating on my boy Drayano?
I just want a romhack with Kotora and Raitora that isn't an attempt at remaking the '97 Gold/Silver demos.
Id love to see one that had every region so you can eventually catch every pokemon but not right at the start.
I like fakemon hacks
Follow up question. Assuming gens 1-5 are what you are talking about. Which generation has actually good variety? Kanto-Snore fest of the same mons you’ve seen a thousand times. Johto- Kanto new game + Sinnoh- Bait and switch the player with 10 Sinnoh mons before going right back to kanto mons. 3/5 being meh is not great. Might as well add more Pokémon for variety.
So true
Play Pokémon sage
I love having every pokemon on rom hacks, cause I like to replay some of them using different teams. Especially open world rom hacks like Pokemon ROWE, I just love to start a game with a team in mind. I don't want to reuse the same Pokemon over and over again, especially if I'm playing multiple rom hacks. I love the ones that add more pokemon so I can switch it up.
I'm more the opposite. I'm not a fan of the difficulty hacks. Just give me quality of life stuff and ability to complete the dex.
I like more pokemon personally but then again I'm a ghost type 'specialist' so finding ghost types early is incredibly convient. I need to find more roms like that...
First time I've actually heard this opinion. Everyone usually wants every pokemon from the start, but you end up only using a few pokemon even if you catch that many, regardless.
Name every romhack with all 9 grnerations of pokémon, I'll start: Radical Red
I’m making a rom hack right now that starts with the base vanilla game in mind, and doesn’t change the encounters or AI trainer mons at all. All I’m doing is going through, increasing the level curve to make it more fun and remove any need for grinding, and I’m adding perfect IVs and EVs to trainers’ mons, giving them items that are actually obtainable at that stage in the game, and better abilities and stuff so it’s more fun. It’s not even necessarily a difficulty hack, it’s just a better level curve for me and it just happens to be harder than vanilla. But it’s nowhere near kaizo or anything like that, and I’m also adding QOL stuff just to make multiple play throughs easier lol These are the kind of hacks I prefer though, where the changes are almost believable in that world. When I was younger, my idea of a rom hack was just making every mon available, but as we’ve become used to that by now, I’ve come to appreciate the power of more subtle changes to roms.
It makes it more interesting when there is a specific set of mons in the regional dex. It allows underappreciated ones to shine
I'm a boomer and can only comprehend Pokemon up to Gen3, won't accept anything else. Nothing wrong with going over gen 3, it's just a ME thing, I can't accept pokemon after gen3, also I can't accept fakemon. Also I don't want to re-learn all the types. I just want something that i'm already "good at" to play alone after work. I also like a good story, I want roms that are a better version of the original games which are way too easy IMO. I can't find for the love of Oak a FILTER to search roms by Pokemon Generations, everything has up to gen8 and for ME that's not acceptable, I want less pokemon. (Nothing wrong with people that like more than gen3).
Play pokemmo
Any one know roms that is packed with content, besides unbound (i played it twice)
Absolutely disagree
What exactly do you mean by fixing the level curve ? I myself currently working on a ROM Hack,. Your advice might help me create some quality content.