FireRed hack: Pokemon FireRed Balanced Edition

For those of you who aren't familiar with the Pokemon Balanced games i've been making here's an introduction. The goal of this hack is to make all 386 pokemon in the original FireRed game viable. Even Pokemon Like Magikarp. This is achieved by giving all Pokemon the same Base Stat Total of 600, as well giving them better move pools and types. However, unlike the previous Balanced Edition games, NO POKEMON HAVE BEEN CUT FROM THE GAME. So the original pokemon from Generation 1-3 are all in the game. All 151 original pokemon can be caught in the main game. All Gen 2 and 3 pokemon can be caught in the post game. HOWEVER Pokemon like
Mawile that do NOT evolve from Gen 2 and 3 can also be caught in the main game in every bush and even the Safari Zone.

But we need to talk about the Elephants in the room: The Fairy and Water Types. Fairy Types are broken. Water types are broken as well. Fairy types have been overhauled, but overall nerfed. They are now ONLY super effective against Dragon and Ghost types. They no longer resist Bug,Dark, or Poison. And they are no longer immune to Dragon. But now they do resist Fairy, Electric, Dragon, and Fighting. They are also no longer weak to Poison. Instead they are weak to...Normal Types! So Normal and Steel are the Fairy Types only weaknesses. Water types are now weak to Ice and Poison types. The Ice type also DESPERATELY needed a buff. So just like in previous entries, Ice now resists Grass, Flying, and Normal types. Dragon type, Poison and Steel moves have been buffed offensively in that they all either deal more damage, or have a higher chance of inflicting a secondary effect.
This game also adds multiple new features in the game:
Decapitalisation
The game now matches current games by not yelling at the player.
PSS Split with Icons
Gives the game more variety and allows pokemon to gain Niches, such as a Physical Psychic Attacker.
New Moves
131 to be exact. These moves have also been revamped by myself. For example:

1. Moves like Will-O-Wisp have 100% accuracy but always go last.
2. Moves like Ember have priority.
3. Moves like Flame Wheel always induce status.
4. Moves like Fire Punch have an increased chance of causing status problems (30-45%).
5. Moves like Fire Blast Deals 125 damage, have 80% accuracy, and have a 35% of inflicting status.

New Abilities
Many pokemon have new abilities that make them more unique. Squirtle now has the ability Analytic for example.
New Items
In a game that aims to be played competively, items like the Choice Scarf are very appreciated. But due to all Pokemon having the same BST, Eviolite is banned.
Running Shoes can now be used indoors
Especially useful against Team Rocket and Gym Leaders (Disabled in the De-Enhanced Version)
The EV cap is now set to 252
Which finally updates it to no longer set to the pointless 255 EV. (Disabled in the De-Enhanced Version)
Critical Hits have been updated to Gen 6's standards
So critical hits are weaker, but are more common. (Disabled in the De-Enhanced Version)
Stats are now colored according to Nature/IV's are displayed
Now there will be no need to memorize/Google nature effects! No need for the IV Checker either! (Disabled in the De-Enhanced Version)
TM's are now Reusable/HM's can now be forgotten.
No need to buy TM's like in the previous entries. Or go to the Move Deleter. (Disabled in the De-Enhanced Version)
Deoxys normal form is now usable
It is possible to reverse this. (Disabled in the De-Enhanced Version)
All 386 Pokemon have a BST of 600
The main feature of the game.
Pokemon habitats have been totally overhauled
Pokemon like Caterpie are now lategame pokemon for example.
Trainers and gym leaders now have more diverse teams
to match the new habitats of Pokemon. Even Team Rocket is now gender diversified, so
more female rocket Grunts are in the game.

CREDITS
Z34guy for coming up with the idea of this Hack in the first place.
Mr.DollSteak for his Decap and Attack Rombase.
The Learner for his incredibly useful the TL's Quick Enhancer.
The DS-Style 64x64 Pokemon Sprite Resource
KuraPika (OreSama) for their Gen3Tools editor.
Wichu for their Advanced Series.
HackMew for A-Starter and A-Trainer.
LU-HO for their Advance Map.
MagicalEye for play testing/discovering bugs.
Trev for providing solutions to script flaws/conflicts.
Itari/Hopeless Masquerade for their Type Effectiveness Editor.
Without these people, Pokemon FireRed Balanced Edition could never have been made possible!

Bugs
Currently 6 are known, the garbled text should be fixed for poison but I am currently working on the others:
Annoying bugs:
-Garbled text shows up when a Pokemon reaches low health with poison. Makes poison even more annoying. Would be great if the message was removed altogether.
-Alert Vest(item) shows up with garbled text when battling. You can quickly test right under Pallet Town.

Minor bugs:
-Dragon tail stacks up sprites during battle if it's one shoting the enemy team and sprite stays up if battling 2v2 when trainers only have 1 Pokemon each.

Game breaking bugs:
-Lady in a house(all the way up on One Island) throws you back into the intro screen. Wow, had to restart that whole area.
-Cyndaquil has no evolution - shows "...?" during evolution screen. Looks like an out of bounds call. Crashes the game after battling another trainer.



Download Link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/5w15z5wfjf2sa3n/Pokemon_Fire_Red_Balanced_Edition.ips
Download Link (Does not use The Learners Enhancing tool, which may be the source of the bugs):https://www.mediafire.com/file/navhn210y3qf7xn/Fire+Red+Balanced+Edition+De-enhanced.ips

Ummm... screenies? I didn't see any of them. (Could be me not looking properly)

Is it completed?

Officially? Yes. But i've been known to add content patches based on player feedback.

The rom isn't working after i patch it. The emulator either freezes or crashes.

Annoying bugs:
-Garbled text shows up when a Pokemon reaches low health with poison. Makes poison even more annoying. Would be great if the message was removed altogether.
-Alert Vest(item) shows up with garbled text when battling. You can quickly test right under Pallet Town.

Minor bugs:
-Dragon tail stacks up sprites during battle if it's one shotting the enemy team and sprite stays up if battling 2v2 when trainers only have 1 Pokemon each.

Game breaking bugs:
-Lady in a house(all the way up on One Island) throws you back into the intro screen. Wow, had to restart that whole area. :(
-Cyndaquil has no evolution - shows "...?" during evolution screen. Looks like an out of bounds call. Crashes the game after battling another trainer.

MagicalEye said:

Annoying bugs:
-Garbled text shows up when a Pokemon reaches low health with poison. Makes poison even more annoying. Would be great if the message was removed altogether.
-Alert Vest(item) shows up with garbled text when battling. You can quickly test right under Pallet Town.

Click to expand...

For Gegalix: these are text string bugs that you can fix by inserting the text strings with XSE and then changing pointers in relevant areas to point to the fixed text.

Magical Eye and Trev your names have been added to the credits. I've removed to features that I added using TL's Quick Enchancer: The Poison Revival and the Catching Pokemon Giving Exp. The poison problem should be fixed. I'm struggling to find time to bugfix, but I will do my best to handle the other bugs, especially the cyndaquil one. I recommend re-downloading the now modified FR Balanced game. If any more problems arise let me know and thanks for speaking up!

I think I found another bug. During your first fight with Gary in the lab and you go to check your Pokemon's ability and what item it's holding, the game black screens.

I ran into a glitch. I chose my starter, went to check the summary, screen went black and stayed that way.

Umm... I'm not quite sure you know what "balance" means. No offense.

Sorry for the delayed response Z34Guy. I'm going through a great deal of problems in my personal life that are expensive and time consuming to deal with. I've been working on a (mostly) bug free version of Fire Red Balanced, but it is not yet complete. Thank you for your patience.

I've also been working on Pokemon Heartgold Balanced, which is nearly complete and will hopefully be the most enjoyable Balanced Edition Hack yet. It will also likely be the last Pokemon Balanced Hack, as balancing the Unova Pokemon to make them unique without being repetitive to previous generations would be too time consuming for me to do by myself.

I also want to focus on finishing making detailed guides on stats pokemon location, good places to EV train etc. as well as focus on bug fixing and balancing issues.

Arceus327 I am very open to constructive criticism. Could you explain what you feel is wrong with the balancing done in the Pokemon Balanced Hacks? Or how you think that they could be improved?

Gegalix said:

Sorry for the delayed response Z34Guy. I'm going through a great deal of problems in my personal life that are expensive and time consuming to deal with. I've been working on a (mostly) bug free version of Fire Red Balanced, but it is not yet complete. Thank you for your patience.

I've also been working on Pokemon Heartgold Balanced, which is nearly complete and will hopefully be the most enjoyable Balanced Edition Hack yet. It will also likely be the last Pokemon Balanced Hack, as balancing the Unova Pokemon to make them unique without being repetitive to previous generations would be too time consuming for me to do by myself.

I also want to focus on finishing making detailed guides on stats pokemon location, good places to EV train etc. as well as focus on bug fixing and balancing issues.

Arceus327 I am very open to constructive criticism. Could you explain what you feel is wrong with the balancing done in the Pokemon Balanced Hacks? Or how you think that they could be improved?

Click to expand...

Just please make sure Heartgold Balanced is bug-free before releasing it. I don't fancy being a beta tester.

I most definitely will. Incidentally, the reason why FireRed Balanced Edition is so full of bugs is because I used many different tools, whereas Leafgreen Balanced used very few tools. There is one particular tool that suspect to be the main culprit in FireRed Balanced's bugs. It will lose some cool features, but I doubt that they're worth the bugs. I may even post 2 versions, one with the tool, and one without.

I doubt HeartGold Balanced is going to be buggy because i'm only using 1 tool that has as of now been very reliable.

Hello.
Before i make my main comment i want to ask is this mainly completed?
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So your main focus is the balance, is to make ALL pokemons equaly competitive. But doesnt that mean that they are becoming very similar stats wise? hence every pokemon loses its uniqueness? (not that in vanilla pokemons are much unique... just saying).
For example my point of view on monster raising games is that balance should come AFTER you create every monster with its own truly different stats/skills etc. I know u might say that pokemons are already like that but they arent, because stats differences i have in mind are a lot more realistic.
I may not make much sense and my english dont help me much, i just look for a pokemon game that instead of trying to make everything equal, tries to make each pokemon truly unique, with realistic and influencial stats/skills differences. Even if that means some WILL be weaker compare to others.

No you're point does make sense, and I had no problem understanding your english. I had the same concern that you had, that all Pokemon having the same BST would make them all the same. For years before submitting my first Balanced Entry I worried about this. But then I realized that there are a total of 360,000 different stat combinations that I can come up with, so variety within stats isn't an issue. I have Gen 1 and 2's stats visualized here, and if any particular Pokemon's stat distribution bothers you, feel free to let me know.
https://www.mediafire.com/#mdbxm13k9lozs
I make balance changes to stats all the time, and i'm planning on releasing another one soon.

I understand that you want uniqueness over balance. But personally I would place balance first, then uniqueness second, because you can attain both. Using abilities, movepools, and typings allows me to give Pokemon even more uniqueness after their BST. Have you gotten a chance to play any of the Balanced Edition games? Your input is appreciated.

I will also note to all that the De-Enhanced version of Pokemon FireRed Balanced is now available for download.

Gegalix said:

No you're point does make sense, and I had no problem understanding your english. I had the same concern that you had, that all Pokemon having the same BST would make them all the same. For years before submitting my first Balanced Entry I worried about this. But then I realized that there are a total of 360,000 different stat combinations that I can come up with, so variety within stats isn't an issue. I have Gen 1 and 2's stats visualized here, and if any particular Pokemon's stat distribution bothers you, feel free to let me know.

I make balance changes to stats all the time, and i'm planning on releasing another one soon.

I understand that you want uniqueness over balance. But personally I would place balance first, then uniqueness second, because you can attain both. Using abilities, movepools, and typings allows me to give Pokemon even more uniqueness after their BST. Have you gotten a chance to play any of the Balanced Edition games? Your input is appreciated.

I will also note to all that the De-Enhanced version of Pokemon FireRed Balanced is now available for download.

Click to expand...

Whats different about the De-Enhanced version?

@gegalix
Fair enough. I just see many hacks mention stats/skill changes but none says based on what these changes happen. For example, i personally would make realistic changes, like, Onix is a pure rock monster? then he will have very high physical defense and attack. etc etc.
Yes, skills also take part in making monsters unique and balancing them.
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Nope i havent played any of your hacks yet, im going to do it right now. But as SH60 asks, what are the differences in with the De-enchanced version?

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btw i made a pretty big comment on one hack, i basically explained my entire point of view on and suggested how someone could modify and create a totally different hack, something never done before. ill message you.

Also, you changed skills on the pokemons? meaning a wiki like this https://pokemondb.net/pokedex/bulbasaur wont apply accurately on your hack?

I tried to play the enchanced version, i pick charmander and at the first fight with Gary, when i choose Fight, the game resets.

EDIT:
same thing on the de-enchanced version.