Hell YEAH - today I can proudly present you the NEW Pokémon Shiny Gold X version! Let me talk a bit about that, first of all 2 important things:
- This hack based on the last version of hacksrepairmans Shiny Gold edit. The original hack was created by Zel, and I also have not changed anything about the story and the ideas from Zel like hacksrepairman also does before. This means no PSS split, no fairy type and so on.
- The hack is NOT beta tested yet! This should not be a problem because no flags changed, no free space was used and so on, so the game would not crash and there are no broken mechanics. But anyway, if you found out some weird things, wrong balanced trainer levels etc. feel free to post it here.
So, what is this hack about? Some of you maybe remember the old days of Pokémon Shiny Gold with the long-standing Beta 5 version. This version ends after 13 badges and we all waited for years to hopefully get a finished version of the hack. But there was an X-version of Shiny Gold with higher trainer levels. Today we have the finished version of Shiny Gold, but no "X". So, I decided with the post #4000 in this thread to bring it back and fill Shiny Gold X with life again. Here we go, the details about this game are – stronger trainer levels, yeah. All wild Pokémon are unchanged. But I will tell you some details:
- NEW trainers in the new area south of Route 41. This area was restored from beta leftovers in one of the last big updates made by hacksrepairman. But I found some trainers out of bounce and put them back onto the map. This area is completely beta tested, no problems with the new trainers. For sure this area is also rebalanced and now feels like a true Sevii Island exploration. I am not sure whether you have to beat Trainer Red at first to open this area, but anyway – it is designed to explore it after collecting all 16 badges.
- Rebalanced Gyms, Gym Leaders, Gym Leader rematches (yeah, REMATCHES!), Elite 4 and Champ battles and even Trainer Red to HG/SS levels. All of these trainers have unique move sets, items, higher EV Pokémon and a better KI. Some of them are oriented on HG/SS, too, some are unique because new Generation 4 mechanics are not implemented in this game.
- Stronger Rivals (and rematches after the story, again) – yeah, you have some more of them in this game than in the original GSC games. All rivals are designed with unique attributes like Gym Leaders, E4 members and so on like I said before, too.
- Team Rocket is very weak in the original GSC games, so I rebalanced them, too. The first part of the big Rocket Story is able to play before or after defeating Chuck and Jasmine, so the level curve stagnates in this part of the game. Like in the original games I did not change something about that, but it should be a bit more enjoyable and less annoying to beat them now.
- And in general, all normal trainers are upgraded a bit. In Johto most of them are 2-3 levels higher than before, some of them needed higher upgrades to fit in in the overall rebalanced game. Kanto is a different thing, why the heck Gamefreak designed all trainers in the original GSC games so weak there? They are much stronger now, even stronger than in HG/SS to make Kanto finally enjoyable to play. Also, all other trainers in the game like members of SS. Anne, Trainer Battle Tower and other unique trainers who are not in the original GSC games are rebalanced.
So, that is the story about the new Shiny Gold X version, I hope you will enjoy it. Think about one thing – if there never was a HG/SS release, these 3rd Generation Johto hacks would be so much more popular than they are today. And I tried to "demake" a bit of HG/SS back into this game, because no one even thought about the remakes when most of Shiny Gold was originally designed. The old Shiny Gold X needed (for me) to much annoying grind on some parts, if the Johto level curve grows to fast there is no other way than grind, grind and again grind. But I think with the new one we found a good way between too much grind on the one and to weak trainers on the other side. Feel free to play this game as a Nuzlocke challenge, try to beat it with different teams or tell us your individual challenge if you have one. I am a big fan of Shiny Gold since so many years and it is one of my favourite hacks still today, so let us replay this masterpiece from Zel and hacksrepairman once again. Gotta Catch 'em All!
Edit: I forgot to tell you something about the "1trainer/1" thing. There are 28 trainers in the game, named 1trainer/1, 2trainer/1 and so on. You can save their phone numbers like in the original games and call them for a rematch. For the most of these trainers there are 4 rematches to do, in the first rematch they are named 1trainer/2 e.g., then 1trainer/3 for the next rematch and so on. Maybe this feature is a bit buggy because I found some of the rematch trainers out of bounce onto some maps, but this is the original idea behind this Zel had while creating Shiny Gold. So, I did not change anything here again, I only rebalanced them, too. The name helps you to detect these trainers. Feel free to use this feature and tell us your thoughts, thanks!