Emerald hack: Pokémon Emerald - No levels mod

This romhack gives every Pokémon, wild and trainer, fixed stats throughout the entire game instead of stats increasing as you level up.
This is an experiment I made just for fun a while ago. A few people mentioned they were interested in it, so I decided to share it.


What is it?
This is an emerald romhack that removes the effects of levels on Pokémon stats. Pokémon still learn move or evolve through levels, but their stats remain fixed for the entire game. So for instance, the Geodude you're fighting on Route 1 is no better or no worse than the one you found on Victory Road.

Why is it interesting?
The idea is to put a different twist on Pokémon gameplay. This seemingly small change completely changes the way you have to think about Pokémon battles and team planning. Since you can't just grind your way to win a tough fight, every battle has the potential to be challenging, even against wild Pokémon. This forces you to approach battles differently. Stats changing moves become much more useful and it makes it much more important to master type matchups and strategies and to experiment with different team members.

Issues
Since the base game was designed around levels, you can definitely expect some balance issues. Namely concerning the items that are given to the player, the Pokemon you have access to, etc.

Battles can be especially tedious in the early game. Beating an opponent that has 100HP when you only know tackle takes a long time, and you will run out of PP quite frequently. This does get better as you progress through the game and learn better moves.
Protip: Use speed up during battles!

Download
IPS patch
This mod was made from the emerald disassembly and needs to be applied to this rom

Even if I'm not with the time to play it right now, I think it is a really interesting concept and I'm willing to try it in the future. Thank you so much for sharing !

I played your other game Infinite Fusion and enjoyed it a lot. I expect another quality game here.

This seems to be a very interesting concept on paper, definitely going to give this a spin.

Three Questions:
Are there plans to make every mon present in Generation 3 available?
Are there plans to implement the Physical-Special Split?
Do IVs, EVs, and Natures still modify stats as normal?

I'm really interested in this concept and would love it in other games. Grinding is always the most boring part imo, and perfect IVs in any encounter would pretty much free the player from RNG.

NY Larry said:

Three Questions:
Are there plans to make every mon present in Generation 3 available?
Are there plans to implement the Physical-Special Split?
Do IVs, EVs, and Natures still modify stats as normal?

I'm really interested in this concept and would love it in other games. Grinding is always the most boring part imo, and perfect IVs in any encounter would pretty much free the player from RNG.

Click to expand...

I'm very certain the answer to your third question would be no, since all stat changes happen when you level up and this hack removes such changes when leveling up. Only time you would see any sort of stat change would be in a battle, but those stat changes go away once the battle is concluded.

It's definitely an interesting idea to say the least.

This one is interesting!

NY Larry said:

Three Questions:
Are there plans to make every mon present in Generation 3 available?
Are there plans to implement the Physical-Special Split?
Do IVs, EVs, and Natures still modify stats as normal?

I'm really interested in this concept and would love it in other games. Grinding is always the most boring part imo, and perfect IVs in any encounter would pretty much free the player from RNG.

Click to expand...

I want to keep the game as vanilla as possible (aside from no-levels) so I don't plan to add the physical/special split or change the route encounters. However, it's possible that other rom modifying programs like the universal pokemon randomizer might be compatible with this (I haven't checked), so you could potentially make the other Pokémon appear with it.

I would have to check for your third question, but probably not.

Wow, this was exactly what I was looking for, I always wanted this in the official games.
I didn't anticipate the problem with move damage discrepancies but perhaps the range could be narrowed if it were ever adopted into a main line game.

Especially in the modern age, with Pokémon Home and Battle Passes, imagine being able to include your your favorite Pokémon in the early game without feeling like you completely threw off the balance.
Also, they could remove the level cap (limiting candies past lv 100) and add cosmetic unlocks as you level up your favorite Pokémon.