I'm wrecking my brain trying to come up with some way to justify downloading this hack again. I feel like there's just something I'm somehow overlooking to be able to stop having so much trouble with the game. HP bulk doesnt seem to do much, nor does having high Defense values. Speed is pretty much useless to me now, and any damage I could do means nothing if I cant survive anything the bosses do. I've combed over the movesets of every Pokemon I can access up to where I get brick walled at, and nothing seems to cut it.
Man, is this how Jack Skellington felt trying to figure out Christmas?
I completely understand your situation : i enjoy this hack, but the difficulty clearly isn't for everybody. I think it would be pretty good to get some options to adjust the difficulty (not saying making the game easier, just adding options, like shift/set for example or access to the bag), because even though this is supposed to be a difficulty hack, i think all these restrictions can go against all the diversity in the hack, which is also one of the main reason people play it from what i've seen, and the reason why Radical Red caught my eye.
Which is why i also don't understand people calling you a "braindead monkey" for simply sharing your experience with the hack, and stating what you didn't like about it. If you're going to act like this, at least give some helpful advice.
A big thing about pokemon difficulty is that it's difficult if you want it to be, and easy if you want it to be. Nuzlockes, no item clauses, intentionally underleveled teams, monotype runs... All these are just to make the game harder on yourself, and i like doing them. And imo it's a brilliant way of doing difficulty. It's, like people like to call it, "non-linear", so everyone can have a different experience with the game. Kinda like how people play through Dark Souls games with different builds for example.
Once again, i am not saying the difficulty of this hack in and of itself, is a bad thing : it's the main goal of the hack after all. But if almost every pokemon from gen 1 to 8 is in a easily downloadable firered romhack, people like me aren't going to discover through it's difficulty, but through it's diversity and various QoL features. I also understand that the creator is working on making more and more pokemons viable, and that's a really good thing, props to soupercell for that and everything in this hack, but i think adding some difficulty settings would be welcome for some players. And it would also increase the playerbase and make the hack even better imo.
TLDR : I think adding difficulty settings, like the hard and normal mode of the randomizer, wouldn't be a bad thing and would better the experience for a lot of people, as well as the quality of the hack even more.
Also, this is mainly targeted at some comments i've seen here, don't be toxic against people who struggle and don't have a good experience because of it. Insulting and acting passive-agressive isn't bringing anything to the conversation, but helpful advice does, and can even make someone better at the game in general.