This is why I am making this post. Typically, I don't really have much to say about the gameplay in rom hacks, I'm usually there for the battles, which usually stay the same mechanically so I focus in on those and related aspects. Because of this my feedback is usually just "The difficulty curve is too steep," or "The Pokemon selection could use more variety." My problem here isn't with the battles, but rather the resource management. By design, Trainers in SXF give out very little money, so you have to use your items conservatively, and decide when the best time to use them. This isn't too much of an issue and and of itself, a little annoying in my opinion but I could get used to it, especially since I can get a Lillipup with pick up early on.
The issue lies in the main gameplay loop, which causes the resource managment to become an active detriment to Scale x Fang. In mainline, you go through routes and caves to get to cities/towns, often sequentially. Here, there's no routes, you just go to an area, and work your way through to a certain area in a location, and then make your way back to the hub city. However that's the problem. In mainline because you're going from one city to another, you're given incentive to use your items to heal up, as even if you fly back to the previous town (assuming that's even an option where you are), you still have to go through the entire route again. The difference here is that you're gonna have to backtrack all the way back to the hub city anyways, and if you white out you'll not only have to make your way through the area again but you'll lose some of your already limited money supply, so you might as well backtrack to the city to heal; especially because pokemon centers also restore pp whereas potions can't, which might not be an issue now with each attack typically having 25-30 pp, but it's going to become one as your pokemon get stronger moves with less pp. This is made even more tedious because of the wild encounters you'll encounter along the way. While you *could* buy PP restoration items (if they were available in the marts) and Repels to aleviate both these problems, because of the limited money you earn it's much more practical to buy Potions, Status Heals, and Pokeballs instead of those (which is arguably the case even if the resource management aspect was removed, at least until the elite 4). This doesn't add a new layer of thinking like the devs thought it would, it just makes the experience tedious. The devs could make the train back to the hub city unusable until you either white out or finish the story beat in the area, but what if I were to want to change my pokemon? It's an obtuse solution that feels like it could cause more problems.
And this where the elephant of Anti-Speed Up rears it's head. While the issue with the gameplay loop would still be there, Speed Up would make it much less tedious. However, because the developers insist on disabling speed up, the devs now have to deal with the issue themselves. The problem is that the issue lies in the game's core, it would require a complete rework of the structure of Scale x Fang. I understand why the devs don't want to have players use speed up, but as I've stated before in the thread dedicated to speed up; big JRPG series are beginning to implement speed up as a QOL feature, so why not here? Why view it as a means of cheating?
2/10
On a more personal note, if I were to rate it's gameplay, Dark Rising of all hacks would get a higher score with a 3/10 or maybe even a 4/10. Yes it's arguably more tedious (even factoring out grinding), but you want to know the difference? Dark Rising's tediousness stems from the unfair difficulty and balance, but despite that there's still satisfaction to be had in overcoming the challenge it has, despite the overwhelmingly bitter taste left in my mouth. There is no challenge in Scale x Fang, running back and forth through an entire area anytime I want to heal, it's just tedious for the sake of it.
