| Axiao |
November 9th, 2020 5:14 PM |
Between the quality of life improvements provided by the CFRU and the re-balancing (or unbalancing.. kek) of gameplay to a higher level of difficulty has easily made this the best pokemon game I've ever played. I played gen 1 + 2 as a kid and didn't really play through the other gens (starting from where I left off) until a few years ago when VII came out. Every single one of them suffered from the same fatal flaw of grind to over-leveled pokemon and mash button mindlessly to win. EVs and IVs could be completely ignored unless you were playing against other people. I love that this hack forces you to move beyond that mold and actually plan (at least a little bit) how you're going to handle things to get over the next obstacle.
I won't lie, I started playing this like every other pokemon game, pick the ones I like, ignore the rest and plow ahead. The very first gym completely ended that. I actually had to go back to the routes, reevaluate my team, switch out members and move sets... and actually make sure I was prepared. 100% worth it, as it made succeeding feel more worthwhile and satisfying that something was accomplished or achieved. I thought I had it down good enough after that, until I got to that POS Frogadier... who wrecked me all over again. Eventually beat him, the struggle was worth it. A similar thing happened in the 3rd gym, although not as many actual fails to get the badge.. as I thought the early 'surprise' there was a little underwhelming since I 1-shotted it until the floating rat appeared and party wiped me. Every time things went wrong, it was because of something stupid I did and everytime I corrected those stupid things everything went a lot smoother.
I'm almost to the league at this point, but I do have one singular suggestion (in retrospect): Regular trainer battles could be harder because once you bust through a gym leader or other unique NPC everyone else feels mushy and you can blitz through ~10 of them and not go to the pokemon center once. Even the wild battles could be made just a little bit harder as it feels a bit weird that pokemon levels are sometimes ~10 levels below trainers/gyms that are immediately next to them (instead of less of a gap).
I did go back and play around a bit with save states, I think most of the harder sections (gyms in particular) can be mostly reliably beaten with almost any pokemon (still working on the 6 member bidoof party though) available in the areas preceding them as long as some forethought is put into the team.
I appreciate all the hard work that went into making this hack, cause the quality shows, 10/10.
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Separately I did have a bit of a weird problem on Route 11 (although it could be my setup):
1) massive FPS drop (playing on the latest stable release of mGBA; SDL Audio, OpenGL Video, 60FPS no frameskip)--- I don't know if it's related to the kid running around in the grass... but it seemed like it, because it was fine when he was offscreen/away.
2) Only Stuffuls were spawning there [during the day]... (or I was just impatient after the 13th+ one in a row). I've been filling up the DexNav in each route/area before moving on to the next one and Route 11 was the only one I skipped (partly because the FPS drop would have made it more of a chore)
3) I also had a Rattata-A that did not evolve into Raticate-A but I think thats because I didn't evolve it at night and screwed it up.
4) On the 2.1 Pokemon location google sheet, you may want to add a comment to one of the cells (like Route 1 Rattata for instance or just below the table) that the Pokemon with red text change with the time of day and the ones without do not. It seems super obvious in retrospect, but I didn't figure it out until Mt. Moon... "WhAt DoEs IT AlL MeAn?"... oops.
5) It took me literal hours to get a baltoy in Mt. Moon tunnels (day) for DexNav completion and drifloon Route 5 (day and night) for same, although that just could have been me being very unlucky. Everyone else (minus the fps/spawn issue with route 11) has showed up within 30-40 minutes or so, even at 2% spawn rates. (averaging about 2 in that time for the rare spawns)
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