After waiting for 1.2 to drop and planning my team in advance - with some ideas I read on discord - I grabbed it as soon as it was out. I caught a Pidgey for sprout tower and went to get my first MVP - Bellsprout. I then nabbed a Cubone, leveled it until it learned headbutt and shook all trees until I found one that spawned Scyther and Yanma. So. Much. Experience. I might have gone a bit overboard with leveling, because when I entered sprout tower I was level 22 with STAB bonus against weakness. Those Bellspouts did not have a good day.
Bellsprout line coverage is no joke (electro, water, fire, ice, steel, poison), and Spark being replaced with Thunderbolt in 1.2 is super op but fun. Bellsprout was level 25 when I went against Falkner and the levelcurve didn't catch up to me until Cinnabar. I pretty much ate Bugsy for breakfast as well.
I reset the Odd Egg until I got Tyrogue and evolved it to Hitmonlee instantly. Honestly, those two alone would have carried my whole game, between great physical and special coverage. There are a lot of steel, dark and fly types, so fight and ice is really good. Nevertheless I took the Eevee and evolved it to Flareon after it learned Baton Pass as well. It wasn't too useful in the end, didn't even learn its signature move before I fought the e4 and was left to mostly use Bite against some psychic types. But it's a purple Dragon, I need it. Need!
Chuck gave me some trouble, since Victreebel has a fight weakness and Hitmonlee has pitiful defense. I actually had to grind a bit to beat him, but the rest of the leaders fell easily. Before moving on to Blackthorn, I tried to get a lucky egg, but gave up when my team was almost level 50.
My last team member was Suicune, which I spent too much time on resetting for shiny, just to get one with horrible stats. Not that it matters much, it's still Suicune and one of my favorite designs of this hack. It wasn't
too useful; Confusion is pretty weak, even with STAB, and Victreebel and Hitmonlee already knew ice and water attacks. It'll get Psychic in the postgame, though. And yes, I play fully like back in the day, offensive moves all the way :p
For what's probably my favorite design I had no room: Gligar. I had kinda hoped it would be able to be my Fly mon (well, it has wings, alright) but it wasn't, and between needing all 4 HMs on Krabby and a mon that can learn Fly, Gligar didn't stand a chance. Sorry, lil guy :( Once I am done with Whirlpool, I will make room for one. Gligar is one of those things I'd put on my desk IRL and pat it occasionally on the small little (plastic) stone head.
I mean, look at this cutie:
Honorable mentions to Ledian, which carried my first run on 1.0/1.1 (didn't reach HoF) and is also a great design. Other mons I really liked were Sandslash, Horsea line, Arcanine, Corsola, Stantler and Teddiursa. All of the designs are all pretty great, but some I just fell in love with.
Shiny odds are increased, so I found a shiny Diglett on my first run, and a shiny Yanma on my second run, in addition to some I reset for, like Eevee and Suicune. Shiny palettes are really nice, too.
I loved the attention to detail; changed card game in the game corner, changed lighthouse mon, the eeveelutions. Some of the new palettes are awesome, the area around Blackthorn, the mornings, the colorful touches on cities. Having Cherrygrove City with pink trees is so good. Some of those colors I want to rip straight out and take with me into every crystal hack ever.
A real pain was HM management. Gen2 has just
too many (And other field moves! Ugh.) and it's so hard to plan a team and figure out who can learn what without being able to look up info. Especially with water HMs being seemingly random, with a bunch of mons being able to learn Surf, but not Whirlpool and/or Waterfall (this has always been the case in core games as well, and it has always annoyed me. It's not like being able to learn Whirlpool gives that great advantage in battle). Wanted to use Bellossom; nope, no Whirlpool. Wanted to use Voltorb; nope, no Fly. It took me forever to figure out that Krabby still can learn Surf, Whirlpool, Cut, Rock Smash and Strength (but no Flash, he), from which moment on it singlehandedly carried almost all my HM needs.
The only thing that makes me seriously paranoid is the lack of a move relearner. The game is so great, but later gens and other hacks spoiled me a bit in that I am really stressed out about having one wrong click possibly ruin a mon on level 50 by forgetting an attack it can't get back, and for which there is no TM. That's pretty much the only quality of life improvement I still desperately wish for.
All in all - thank you guys for this awesome hack.
