Graphics: 8
Pokémon DarkViolet takes its visual inspiration from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, a breath of fresh air among the abundance of ROM hacks that aim to emulate the look of FireRed/LeafGreen or later generations! It is quite unique in this aspect; I can't think of any other hacks or fan games that opted to use this style. The titlescreen is more or less a recoloured version of default FireRed's with a new logo and Mewtwo sprite which works well enough. I assume this design was used to add to the idea that it's a remake, although it isn't particularly imaginative.
The overworld sprites for NPCs and Pokémon were perfect. It must have taken a lot of work to recreate them in RSE style - it's no mean feat but was achieved nonetheless. I was also immediately impressed by the overhauled and improved interior tilesets. As for the outdoors, these were very much hit or miss in my opinion. Maps contained the odd tile error here and there plus I wasn't a fan of the tileset used for Viridian Forest or Cerulean Cave. They seemed much less polished than the others.
The appearance of the battle interface is one of the areas where this hack shines. There were a few gorgeous custom attack animations; something that isn't commonly seen. The battle backgrounds also looked great alongside the beautifully revamped Pokémon sprites from the author's own DS-style sprite resource (this is shamelessly advertised with an in-game reference, which I found hilarious even if it was slightly off-putting from an immersive perspective). However, the battle graphics aren't perfect; in contrast to the Pokémon sprites, the trainer sprites from later generations were not very well devamped.
It's clear that a lot of effort was put into modifying all visual aspects of this hack. The overall style seems consistent for the most part, which is the key principle for me when it comes to graphics, so with everything else considered I will award
DarkViolet 8 points in this category.
Story: 7
Pokémon DarkViolet is Chaos Rush's take on a recreation of the original Red and Green versions. I will admit that I felt apprehensive before playing
DarkViolet because like a lot of Pokémon game fans I've had more than enough of Kanto. Although that is more of a personal opinion than an actual reflection of this hack, I worried that it wouldn't have any story aspects to help it stand out from the games it was inspired by. It's safe to say my assumptions were incorrect! Similarly to
Adventure - Red, the new story intrigued me enough to want to play much further past the three-gym requirement for judging in this competition.
Something I strongly dislike in any kind of game's writing is the illusion of choice. Why offer a yes or no option when the outcome is the same despite the player's choice of answer?
DarkViolet was guilty of this in a few instances. For example, I wasn't allowed to decline Red's invitation to dance in the S.S. Anne ballroom. When I responded with "no", the dialogue simply repeated until I agreed which was infuriating. I feel it would have been better to go ahead with the compulsory scene without asking the player to make an ultimately pointless dialogue choice. Another minor gripe with the writing had to do with the NPC text, a lot of which was unchanged from the FireRed base. I assume this was intentional to further add to Kanto's atmosphere, but it came across as a little lazy.
The thing I appreciated most about this Kanto retelling was the addition of characters which are less seen in the traditional games and their development, such as Kamon (or Silver). It was fascinating to watch him go from potential ally in the beginning (from the player character's perspective) to rival later, and the motivations behind his actions. I actually felt sorry for him on more than one occasion. I even felt sad for Giovanni at times as his backstory was expanded upon and the origins for some of his motivations were explained. On the other hand, I wasn't a fan of the Devil's Prism plot, or some of the Team Rocket members' "edgier" dialogues. I also disliked the choice of Gym Leader for Viridian City, I didn't feel it was very fitting although I did like seeing more of the person in question throughout the story, that they weren't simply a background character as they are in the originals.
Gameplay: 7
The first thing I will address is the high level curve which was immediately noticeable. I had to start grinding twenty minutes or so in just to keep up with the surrounding trainers (I also felt there were too many trainers to battle in the first few maps). In the original games, it's fairly obvious that choosing Bulbasaur as your starter is the easiest option followed by Squirtle.
DarkViolet enhances this with the addition of an Omanyte to Brock's team, so if you pick Charmander like I did (I wanted to build a Dragon themed team in my playthrough), the first Gym battle will be even more tedious than usual paired with the obnoxious level curve.
Modernized features included the Physical/Special/Status split, new moves and updated learnsets. There were even a handful of custom moves available, something else that is uncommonly seen in fan games. For instance, my Kingdra could learn an attack called Osmosis, a powerful Water-type HP draining move that I found myself using often. Some quality of life changes which have become somewhat expected for FireRed hacks nowadays, such as sideways stairs and Fairy type, were unfortunately absent from this hack. The latter was most likely left out on purpose in order to further the idea of it being a remake of Red/Green.
The underground market was a welcome addition to an otherwise dull area and sold a lot of useful stock. While there were plenty of items to find in the overworld, barely any were healing items which would be typical in a standard Pokémon game. The silver lining of this cloud was that it left me with enough to sell that I could purchase the coins I needed to grab a Dratini from the Game Corner! On the subject of items, some are broken, such as the Black Flute you can find in Mt. Moon. It seems like a welcome discovery at first if you're running low on Repels to escape the incessant cave encounters, but you'll find upon trying to use it that it neither has any effect nor disappears from the player's bag. This is by no means a game-breaking bug but it's annoying nonetheless and seems like the kind of thing that should have been picked up and corrected during beta testing, especially when this hack was worked on and revised by two different people.
General Appeal: 7
I imagine this hack will mostly appeal to an audience who treasure Kanto as their favourite region. Unfortunately, it lacks a certain degree of polish - while I had fun playing, it is not without its flaws. Moreover, the sometimes boring NPC text and occasionally cringey dialogue leaves a lot to be desired. Similarly to
Adventure - Red, it really reminds the player that they're playing someone's ROM hack as opposed to a professionally manufactured game and breaks immersion. It would be unfair to deduct points from
Adventure - Red for this and not from
DarkViolet for essentially the same thing.
The custom music and remixes of the old tunes we all know and love were incredibly well done and pleasant to listen to. I found myself leaving my emulator on in the background while taking a break from gameplay purely to listen to the music. It's clear that a tremendous amount of effort went into it which is definitely worth a bonus point or two in itself. Overall, I enjoyed
DarkViolet much more than I initially expected to.
Total: 29/40
Graphics: 9
Being a Crystal hack,
Pokémon Coral has the most limitations in terms of graphical capability compared to the other contestants of this year's competition. That is by no means a hindrance to its appeal in this category - the second generation's visual style is timelessly charming and
Coral stays faithful to it.
Pokémon sprites from later generations were devamped beautifully, blending in perfectly alongside the originals. In addition, the fact that the party menu icons had been expanded so that each Pokémon had its own individual icon instead of the generic ones we can all remember was a fantastic touch. Unique overworld sprites for Pokémon were another excellent inclusion that helped to modernize the overall appearance of the game.
While the majority of the tiles are default Crystal, the new palettes helped set them apart from the originals and the incorporation of simple tile animations such as the sparkling mountains in Glint Cavern looked very pretty. I also appreciated the effort that went into ensuring none of the areas looked too similar by making small variations in tiles used in each map.
On the other hand, I wasn't a fan of the Pokémon Center redesign - I think the original Crystal Pokémon Center tiles look nicer - or the style of the titlescreen, which I assume was inspired by the Japanese version, but those are more personal preferences than actual negative points.
I've saved my favourite graphical detail until last: the wonderful view from the peak of Mt. Onwa. This map allowed the player to see a tiny version of a town at the foot of the mountain, giving the impression of being high up and looking down upon it. I've never seen this done before in any kind of fan game and doubt I will see it so well executed again, even if others try to copy this innovative idea.
Story: 5
At the moment the story so far is generic yet familiar; earn eight badges, thwart the ambitions of the evil team, become the region's Champion, and so on. That being said, not deviating from the standard Pokémon game plot isn't necessarily a bad thing. As stated in its presentation,
Coral aims to recreate a typical journey reminiscent of Gold/Silver/Crystal. It is difficult to evaluate the story when there isn't much to talk about at this early stage in the hack's development. For example, the motivations of the staple evil gang, Team Snare, were unclear as nothing had been revealed yet.
The main rival (I named him Colby assuming that was his default, intended name) came across as another version of Professor Oak's arrogant grandson personality-wise. Alex and Marcus, the other two new trainers, seemed as though they might have a cute friendly rivalry or more interesting relationship to be seen later in the game although that could be pure speculation on my part since you don't see a lot of them after your initial meeting at the lighthouse where you receive your starter Pokémon. The mysterious Disguise Master is a great character too - I hope we see him again in future releases!
An aspect of the writing that I appreciated was the well done NPC text. NPCs offered information about the region which was really intriguing and added to the lore and world-building. I also liked investigating the Old Manor of Eventide Forest - a fun sidequest that was enjoyable to play through. It was a little story of its own.
It feels a bit harsh awarding so few points, although to be completely honest as I have already said, there truly isn't much more to elaborate on.
Gameplay: 8
Pokémon Coral boasts an assortment of upgrade features including the Physical/Special/Status split, Fairy type, the Running Shoes, new moves and revised movesets to help bring the second generation mechanics up to date. I was immediately impressed by being able to choose a preferred colour at the beginning of the game to serve as the palette for my player character's sprite. This little touch of character customization was a brilliant detail!
I loved being able to build a varied team so early on in the game. Perhaps I just got lucky that a lot of my personal childhood favourite Pokémon were available for capture such as Growlithe and Mareep. It was also nice to have an opportunity to train Pokémon I had never used before like Noibat and Pikipek. Finally, having a choice of six starters from both Kanto and Johto was great, although this made it really hard to pick my first partner!
Where
DarkViolet had issues with its difficulty and high level curve,
Coral had the opposite problem. I found that every battle was almost too easy, even the Gym battles which you would naturally expect to be more of a challenge. This could have been because as previously mentioned, I had put together a full party of six Pokémon quickly.
The new approach to HMs was another of this hack's positive traits. As opposed to being forced to waste a valuable attack slot (or worse, an entire party member) so long as the Pokémon was capable of learning the HM move in question they were able to use it in the overworld. Speaking of field moves,
Coral includes a new addition in the form of Lava Surf. It was an interesting twist on the move it was based on - instead of encountering Tentacool in the sea, you would battle wild Slugma in the lava. This feature added an extra dimension to the maps it could be used in, which brings me to my closing comments.
The maps were ideally designed, starting off simply and gradually becoming more complicated and longer as gameplay continued. None were particularly difficult to navigate or tiresome to traverse, and felt very reminiscent of Gold/Silver/Crystal's mapping style in that they could have belonged in a traditional game. I only wish there would have been more content to play through.
General Appeal: 7
It's not easy to design a whole new custom region, so I feel
Pokémon Coral deserves a bonus point on that principle alone. In addition, the custom music was a pleasure to listen to and fit in nicely with the rest of the soundtrack. I didn't come across even the tiniest glitch during my playthrough, the characters and dialogue were well written, what can be seen of the Onwa region was fun to explore and it looked lovely into the bargain. The content that is currently playable at the time of writing this is polished and definitely deserving of praise.
All of that considered, I think
Pokémon Coral earned its place in this competition - I just don't feel it has enough content to be a worthy Hack of the Year winner at this point in time. Perhaps next year? In conclusion, I truly enjoyed playing coraldev's creation and very much look forward to future releases!
Total: 29/40
Graphics: 7
For the most part, Aethestode has done a brilliant job with the graphical modifications we can see in
Adventure - Red. The new Pokémon party menu and summary screens, updated trainer and Pokémon sprites, type icons, battle backgrounds and HP bars all looked great. I like the titlescreen a lot - it's not exactly traditional Pokémon style but it's ideal for the game's setting, depicting the titular character. I also loved the cute overworld sprites for NPCs and Pokémon. The character mugshots for the main cast, complete with varying expressions, were another fantastic addition and really helped bring conversations to life in a unique way.
The HeartGold/SoulSilver style for the overworld lends itself fairly well to this hack however there were a few prominent inconsistencies, mainly when it came to the outdoor tilesets (the interiors looked good). Some buildings and minor decorations had clearly defined outlines while others didn't. Inconsistency has a negative effect on overall visual appeal, hence the deduction in points for this category. The Day/Night system wasn't quite perfect either. Entering a gatehouse or using certain warps at night caused a reversion to the original daytime palette. This was a bit distracting, even if the palette reversion only lasted for a few frames.
The fact that it's been just over a year since I last played and there are still no running frames for the player character's overworld sprite had me raising my eyebrows a little. I feel it would be better to focus on tidying up basic requirements like this before considering working on new features, which brings me to my next point. While the Fashion Box item is a nice idea it was very obviously unfinished in its implementation, with the menu containing placeholder text "XXXXXX". Using an alternative costume caused a glitch with the in-battle trainer backsprite's palette. In my opinion it's best to iron out any issues with a feature before adding it to a project purely for the sake of it, especially before allowing the player to use it.
Story: 6
This hack is based on the manga series
Pokémon Adventures, but having personally never read any of it, I can't comment on how faithful Aethestode's adaptation is. The story itself is a good one however the writing of it left a lot to be desired in my opinion; it would benefit from some extra proofreading to fix the grammar and punctuation errors (I found the over-use of "!!" slightly irritating). The actual placement of the text was another slight annoyance, frequent use of
\l where
\p should have been used for a new sentence made reading through certain conversations tiresome.
There were also several NPC interactions that felt quite out of place within the setting. Rather than offering information that would have actually been useful - such as a hint about what to do or where to go next, or even something fascinating about the region or current location - NPC dialogue mostly consisted of real-life film/TV show references or immature jokes. It was almost as if the author deliberately intended to break the player's sense of immersion at every turn. Having played previous versions, I'd hoped some of the aforementioned might have been toned down in its new release, but it's still the same if not worse.
I can get along with having a level 5 Poliwhirl for the sake of the storytelling perspective, although there were a few occasions where I found myself unable to "suspend my disbelief". It is a little frustrating to win a battle only for the events of the following scene to insist you lost. As well as that, there were situations where before a battle Red would exclaim that he was sending out a particular Pokémon, then when the battle began, the first party member was sent out instead. I assume this was done to follow the manga more closely, but it was still strange to watch. It could have been avoided by either making use of the
bufferfirstpokemon scripting command or simply not including that line of speech at all.
It may be an unpopular opinion among Pokémon fan game enthusiasts, but I don't mind if the player character talks. In this hack's case where the player is taking on the role of a predefined character, I think it adds an extra layer of depth to the storytelling. Character development has as many positives as it does negatives; the positives being when it came to interacting with the main cast. Supporting characters were well written. The negative aspects concern the titular character himself - the protagonist, Red. It's difficult to know what kind of personality he is supposed to have. During many of the main storyline events he is portrayed as a friendly kid with good intentions and a kind personality. Contrastingly, when speaking with minor NPCs he comes across as rude, sarcastic or even downright mean at times.
My favourite aspect of the story was the inclusion of the bonus chapters, especially the ones where you can play as a different character. The bonus chapter that took place at Silph Co was a personal highlight! This is an interesting and innovative way of telling the story from a different point of view, and I enjoyed playing through these parts of the game the most.
Gameplay: 7
I played the latest release available at the time of writing this, Beta 14.5, released on January 30th of this year. The first noticeable negative by far is the mapping. The majority of maps, particularly routes, were long and meandering with vast amounts of empty space that lacked any detail. No world map made it difficult to know where you were at times (it didn't feel safe to assume that the region's layout was the same as Kanto's traditional one as so much was changed), although the NPC who served as a teleporter between towns and cities was very convenient.
What I absolutely love about this hack is the engaging chapter-based gameplay which keeps everything moving at a fast pace, it has a weird way of pulling you in and making you not want to put it down! I appreciated the inclusion of the mini sidequests a lot of the chapters had to offer and the fact that not every single one of these involved battling, which helped events from becoming too repetitive. Something I feel earns
Adventure - Red an extra bonus point is the implementation of tiles in the overworld that could inflict status conditions on your party - that feature is really cool. Other features that improved the experience were the upgraded battle system and other small quality of life changes such as the Repel system from Black/White.
The very broken and widely criticized following NPC feature had been removed since my last playthrough which was definitely a wise decision of Aethestode's, although there were some problems that remained. The
fadescreen command was used so often and repeatedly in the same script that it made the screen flicker during many of the numerous cutscenes which was quite distracting. Speaking of screen fades, there were several occasions where I thought the game might have frozen before I realized I had to press A to continue from the black screen. This makes me suspect that the scripting is a bit sloppy; better use of level scripts or even teleporting the player to a new location via warp would have been more effective.
General Appeal: 6
Aethestode's
Pokémon Adventure - Red Chapter is rife with "edgy" humour, half-finished implementations of various things and moments where everything felt rushed. All of the aforementioned points, the NPC text in particular, made the game come across as less polished and professional than it otherwise could have been. At times I still found myself enjoying
Adventure - Red in spite of all the "fourth wall breaks", although I had to deduct some General Appeal points because of how distracting they were from the overall experience.
Fans of the Pokémon manga are bound to enjoy this hack and to some degree it is easy to see why there are are so many people out there who like it as much as they do. It's a shame that its lack of professionalism seems to be one of the main factors which lets it down time and time again.
Total: 26/40 
