Pokémon Stigma Version

Introduction
Hey everyone, welcome to Pokémon Stigma, our first ROM hack! We’ve been working on this fellow since 2013 and we finally managed to finish it. So, Pokémon Stigma is a Fire Red hack (english 1.0) , with heavy focus on its story.
It is not perfect by any means, but we really think it is worth your while . The game is 100% COMPLETED, and currently in BETA state. This means that you can play throughout the whole story, while we will be waiting for your feedback regarding possible bugs and your experience with the game in general. We would like to thank you all for playing, and we hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: This game may contain harsh language, depending on your taste. Please consider it PG-15 :D

Update: As of today, we are no longer working on the project (Beta 1.6). We would like to thank you all for playing our ROM! We really appreciate your feedback 😄 We would also like to thank anyone who produced content for the hack online! Hope you had a good time playing Pokemon Stigma, and looking forward to seeing you again with another project!


Story
Our story takes place in the Kanto Region, where you begin your journey as a Pokémon Trainer in Lavender Town. Following the appearance of a hooded man in Pokémon Tower, the whole region is now facing a great threat: a form of mysterious virus that turns Trainers and their Pokémon into mindless ghouls. It is up to you and your trusty friends, Selena and Erik, to find the roots of evil and spoil Team Nihilus’ plan. But who is your ally and who is your enemy in this adventure? You will meet the enigmatic scientist Lumos who is trying to find a cure for the virus, Kanto’s Clergy and Great Sage Stephano who is working towards his own agenda, powerful Gym Leaders, divine deities who will try to deceive you. The enemy forces are on the move, and the faith of the world rests in your hands.

Features

• New story, based on creepy pastas, fan theories, famous glitches and general Pokémon lore
• Custom sprites, maps and overworlds
• Pokémon from Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh & Unova
• 8 Gym Badges and Elite Four
• Characters from the main games, such as May, Dawn, Brendan and Ethan
• Custom evolutions
• Slightly changed color pallets

Screenshots









Custom Evolutions

If you have no idea how to enter the Clergy HQ in Saffron City, take a look here:


Just some friendly tips



Credits

• Scarlet D. (Developer,Maps)
• Megacyber [JakeMajin] (Story, Sprites, OWs, Maps)
• Special thanks to: Kakos Xamos (story), Solidius (sprites), Sapphire Wolf (Pokedex), H4x0r4k0s (mapping)

Changelog

Hey there, I think you might have forgotten to attach your patch to the post?

Does this hack have the physical/special split?

Can't view the screenshot, but I guess it must be fun.

There are no major changes on the battle system of the 3rd gen, the only difference you may see is that you no longer take poison damage outside battle.


Actually there must have been an issue cause i attached the actual ROM rather than a patch, the topic just got submitted by mods and i couldn't do any edits before that so I will start shortly ^^

I just downloaded stigma hope its gd

Having trainers with perfect IV Pokemon and using Full Restore before you even challenge the first gym leader, then the gym leader using Full Restore on his perfect IV Sentret? Combine that with some Outlaw-wannabe edgy dialogue? I'm not enjoying this hack, and it's too quick to judge because I haven't beaten the first gym leader. Maybe I would have if I chose Magby, there's such a bias against Gible, it feels like.

For a while I was thinking that I'm just a trash player getting losses this early, but with the grievances I said earlier, I don't think so. The least you could do is state that this is probably a difficult game.

Edit: Make it so that you can run anywhere. Not running indoors is lame, but even worse is not being able to run on routes randomly, such as Route 1.

You should give a profanity warning in the thread, or even at the start of the hack. I couldn't make it past the intro, sorry. Too much profanity for my taste. :(

I Think this hack is awesome

1) How to evolve kirlia into gallame?
2) How to evolve budew?

Thanks for the feedback! We addressed those issues on today's release

Warning added, thanks for noticing!

1) Gallade is not currently in the game
2) Via friendship, as normal :)

I like this,not bad.

any complete Hack is a welcome hack! thank you very much.

Oh gosh! It's been a while since a completed hack popped up! Downloaded and started playing!

hahaha just hold your horses for a second there I was just gonna upload a new version of the ROM with minor fixes!

edit: new patch uploaded! Have fun!

I'm playing vanilla version and I have found several bugs, will keep you updated.

So, first:
The thing is that you can use Fly from there, I tried flying to Lavender Town and entering the tower again, the game froze.

Second:
Victory Road ladders are bugged, had to use walk through walls cheat to actually progress.

But overall I really like this hack
So if I gonna find some more bugs I will write here.

@Edit.
Just beat the last guy, the game was amazing :D

Another one:
If you go to a house next to PC in Vermillion Town after beating the game, the game will restart.

Questions time:
There is any postgame content?
Was there any possibility to get a Exp. Share?

Thanks for playing throughout the whole game, hope you had a good time! We will be addressing the bugs you mentioned on the next patch
Regarding your questions: 1. there is currently no postgame content and 2. you can get an Exp. Share from one of the Prof's Aides :)

The ROM got updated (Again), with minor fixes again and a major one

Is there a walkthrough for this game yet?

well, since it was published nearly 3 days ago I think it is too early for that

Ayee, so I just started and I'm roughly a 40 minutes in. I'm really digging the fast paced story development.

P.S: infected Butterfree looks so bloody dope!

There's a bad bug on One Island where if I surf and encounter a Pokemon, I can't get back on land. The surfing looks goofy too because the Pokemon sprite is gone, looks like my body's surfing. Actually, in general, any instance of you exiting the current screen, like say you check on your Pokemon or bag while surfing, prevents you from getting back on land. I don't have any repels, I'll have to cheat them in because I can't just surf up Kindle Road and not encounter a Pokemon, which would cause the bug to happen.

This is extremely frustrating. With all due respect, I can't wait to finish this hack because I'm at my boiling point. I don't like it. It's fascinating to read positive comments about it. Maybe the updates did fix the horrendous difficulty of the early-game, but even after that, there's just more layers to this onion that I'm not liking at all.

Edit: the cop in the Celadon Police Department won't trade me Braviary, despite having a Skarmory to give.

Edit 2: After finishing all the story stuff in Pokemon Tower, trying to go back to my house triggers the very first outdoor event in the game, where the cops come and they talk about an explosion and how I'm the "culript," spelling error in the text.

Edit 3: Wow, what you had May say towards the end of the game is...kind of insensitive in 2019 times. I'm acting like the PC police, but come on. I believe you when you said this was started in 2013, such a statement from her would be slightly more acceptable then.

Edit 4: Finished it.

Final thoughts? I don't think it's a good hack. The difficulty mellowed out big time after the first 2 gyms and despite desperately wanting a Vs Seeker and wanting 2 more team members but fearing the grind, I got by with just a quartet. Garchomp, who I couldn't nickname because my nickname didn't save for some reason and I can't find the Name Rater. Alakazam, Conkeldurr, and the traded Pokemon that was my early-game savior as a Zorua, Zoroark. Too much Intimidate, wild routes feel scarce when most of the game is just storyline battles. Team Nihilus, gym battles, the Clergy, cops, it was excessive. It's obvious that you took a bunch of random trainers that would offer EXP with the Vs Seeker, and turned them into one-off storyline battles, endless amounts of grunts and infected trainers, the "demons" in various cave locations. It's such a story-heavy hack that I didn't get the traditional Pokemon sense of wild exploration or even a freedom to go out. You just follow the story and that's it. So convoluted, forced seriousness with a strange tonal shift into random expletive-filled dialogue. Then it gets worse with random NPC dialogue being mostly pointless expletive-filled drivel. As Sakakii stated, the profanity is too much for my taste. As I said earlier on Edit 3, you claim this was started in 2013. I could see that with the language used, the "F" word used so flippantly. I'm not talking about the 4-letter F-word, I'm talking about a certain slur. When you have me act like a PC police, which is never my intention, you're doing something wrong.

At first, I thought I would complain about the difficulty because it was so rough at first, until I brought up this complaint and you claimed to fix it. I wonder if that made the difficulty take a 180 because it got so easy. The final battles were depressingly easy. The last two before the final final final battle (way too many "final" battle teases), I'll admit was a bit of a hassle, but once I figured out their types and the ability of the 2nd one, it was easy. You know who I'm talking about, the ultimate evil that challenged me. If I had more answers to it, this would have been even easier.

Positives? The difficulty is low, but I prefer that over something way too hard. The inclusion of protagonists from the canon Gen 2-5 games are nice, but then their dialogue proceeds to suck, especially my beloved May. What else? Good selection of Pokemon, I guess. I lucked out with my quartet, but where was TM26? That would've been great for Garchomp. Honestly, I can't think of other positives.

More negatives: this should've had the Physical/Special split. Haxorus is a perfect example of a Pokemon wasted by the lack of the split. At least work around it, you didn't, you had Haxorus have Dragon Claw in trainer battles. Haxorus' Special Attack is 60, that's atrocious. Even though Haxorus in this game would spam Dragon Dance/Swords Dance, I don't think it ever KO'd me. But hey, give it Intimidate, because there's just not enough of trainers using Intimidate. At least my Zoroark had Intimidate, but that's just 1, you have trainers that have at least 2 Pokemon with Intimidate, and it happens a crap ton of times. Even though there's a good selection of Pokemon, the selection overall is pretty small. I did have repel up for a good chunk of the last quarter of the game, but it didn't feel like there was a wide selection of Pokemon.

Hacks like this make me so back and forth with new story hacks. I'd rather play the same Fire Red story over and over again. It's serviceable, dialogue that doesn't kill my brain cells, and the focus for me is gameplay, I can keep playing Fire Red and basic enhancement hacks of that game and Emerald for that matter. This hack just makes me more hesitant for new story hacks. That being said, I do plan to play a new story hack soon, but the point still stands. When you have a story that you're supposed to take seriously, I think that's the case for this hack, I'm much more analytical about it, and if a story doesn't impress me, I'm going to bash it. I won't bash old Pokemon game stories, they're serviceable and inoffensive. Hack creators who take it a step further risk me not liking them, I'm more prone to judge it. With this hack, I don't like the story. There's just too much. Endless dialogue, which is a Dark Rising theme that I hate. Oh, Dark Rising comparison, sorry, that might be too mean. The attempt at humor is so out-of-place and just misses the mark completely.

I hope this is taken as constructive criticism, and there's no ignoring or censoring by a moderator or whatever. I stand by my scathing review of this hack. It sucks, I don't like it. Have a good weekend.

Edit 5: the sprites are ugly. I can't believe I didn't mention that sooner.

@SevenChurches Thank you for the extensive review! Feedback helps us get better at what we do. We will make sure to address the bugs and points you mention in the next patches :)

what's your problem man. its a rom hack. no need for damn hate. this guy completed the damn project for people to enjoy!!! not to hate on!! he didn't even get frickin payed!!! every hacks a work of art. this comment is ridicously rude and mean!! if you don't like it say it in a damn nicer tone instead of being a complete jerk. this person created it with no money at all. show some damn respect dude!! have a good day regardless though.

Creators, please do not give unproductive, critical feedback any credence. Your hack, as is the case with every other hack, appeals to a certain subset of the community. People outside this subset cannot be expected to "get" it, and comments like the one above are the result of someone being fooled into believing that his subjective opinion is objective.