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Made an account literally just to ask you some questions and leave feedback, leaving it on this thread since this is the most recent one I've played. Is it normal that all your rom hacks are incredibly slow? Not like, performance wise, but like, gameplay/design/pacing wise.
The Digimon TCG hack regularly has 3-5 energy costs to do anything more than 10 damage and most mons seem to have more than 50 HP which means many turns are sitting there attaching an energy and doing nothing until you hit that point, and because of the varied energy costs of attacks, the enemy tends to just attach energy then pass cause they constantly attach the wrong energy types. Then when you finally get your 3-5 energy, it's still 2-3 turns to KO anything, so you're looking at a 4 prize game being a total of like 10-16 turns, which is just incredibly tedious. I can only imagine how long 6 prize games vs the bosses are. Being forced to include 24-30 energies in a deck to make sure you have enough of each type for the varied attacks without waiting multiple turns without an attachment is not fun and heavily limits deckbuilding. I feel like the game would be much better by either reducing energy costs overall, reducing health overall, or increasing damage overall. It's fine to have 3-5 turns of set up, but once set up, you should be one shotting everything to end the game, as that's still 6-8 turns for a 4 prize game. That or make it so that it takes 2-3 turns to KO something, but you can set up in 1-2 turns so that you're looking at 8-13 turns for a 4 prize game, which is personally still slow for my tastes but much better than the current system. It doesn't have to be set up and KO on turn 1 like current pokemon TCG, but the original GB game is much slower than current Pokemon TCG and even that is like, twice if not three times as fast as this rom hack.
Digimon Crystal is so mind-numbingly slow I had to quit playing it, since I could get my Digimon to lvl 30 and they STILL wouldn't have any good moves other than if they are lucky enough to learn TM moves, of which there are very few and with very little coverage early on. The best way to level without going past the Ghost Gym is to spam headbutt on trees for lvl 20 wild digimon fights, and that's still incredibly slow to reach 30. Seriously, Digimon should not have to reach level 30 to get their first STAB move, and have it be a move that's equivalent to like, Tackle but in their type. Like, why are even wild fights against sleeping mons that are lower level than you taking over 4 turns to finish if you don't have a STAB supereffective move, which most Digimon won't have? MetalKoromon doesn't get a STAB move until 15 when it evolves into Kokuwamon, where it learns Metal Claw, which is just Steel type Tackle, a move you start the game with. It doesn't learn an Electric type STAB move until 20 when it learns Thundershock, which is again, just Electric type Tackle. Even at 30, when it evolves into Andromon, it only just learns Spark since Thundershock, and Thunderpunch has long since been available at the Goldenrod store and is better than Spark. Why is Greymon still using Ember at lvl 30? Why does Dark Tyrannomon not have any STAB moves by lvl 24?
Starting Digimon Nova Red and the first route's most common mon to find by a large margin is Bombmon who just self destructs so if you want to level off of him you need to run back to the pokemon center after every fight or two? How could you have thought that was a good idea? Then Route 22 has Kuramon that lowers accuracy and poisons you, so the fight takes forever thanks to misses and forces you to go back just like fighting Bombmon, or it gives Poyomon, who transforms into you so the fight also still takes forever thanks to resistance to your STAB moves. Like, I see in the doc of all the digimon that Punimon becomes Chaosdramon, one of my favourites, so I figured I'd raise it but I need to split XP with my starter to get it any XP at all. At the start of the game. That's awful and making me want to quit outright, and I haven't even gotten past Viridian City. On top of that, for both Crystal and Nova Red, it feels like many, if not all, of the Digimon are on the slower XP profiles, where they need more to level up than the equivalent Pokemon on those routes/areas did, which only makes things even slower than they already are.
From reading through the threads of this and Crystal your reply to leveling being incredibly slow is "well, you're expected to be underleveled to the gyms for the challenge". That's just a "feels bad" way of making the game harder, especially since you're already buffing the gyms by giving them stronger BST Digimon and more coverage options in their movesets. Like, did you need to double dip that makes the games feel like giant slogs? What makes it so much worse is that the rest of the games discussed, as far as I can tell, are great. Good sprite work for a fan project, no obvious bugs, stable, runs smoothly on emulators both on PC and on mobile. Cheats don't seem to work, which is a shame cause that would sort of solve the slog to just have infinite rare candies to skip any of the ultra slow grinding.
If a player wants to challenge gyms while underleveled, they can do that even in the original Pokemon games. For players that want to challenge at equivalent levels, or even just level up their Digimon so that they aren't using Fresh/In-Training/Child anymore, it shouldn't take them 20+ hours to grind out to that point, then repeat that grind between each gym. I think forcing players to slow down to a snail's pace isn't good game design. It shouldn't take me 6 hours in Crystal to level up two Child level mons from 20 to 30 to get their Adult stages in the first place, and then their best move is still the Headbutt TM on top of that. Like, if we're assuming a curve of "starting with a mix of Fresh/In-Training, and ending with fighting the Elite Four with Ultimates" then knowing Pokemon's level curve, once you're hitting the mid-game you should have Adults on your team and starting to work on them going up to Perfect, not Rookies going up to Adults.
I feel like the rom hacks would be massively improved if the pacing of them were adjusted. You as a player can always slow down the pacing as long as forced XP share isn't on, but you can never speed it up without cheats. Other suggestions I think would improve Crystal at least, is having more than one digimon on some of the routes, and making use of the day/night cycle to change what digimon appear on the route. I haven't peeked into the code to see if I'm mistaken, but there's at least 3 routes/areas I can think of that have what seems to be literally a single Digimon in their encounter table not counting headbutting or fishing. I've also never noticed the encounter tables changing with Day/Night cycles either. For Nova Red, I think Self Destruct should be removed and replaced from Bombmon and Smokescreen should be removed from Kuramon, at the very least. Or even make it so Bombmon is much rarer than Curimon and Punimon, which would allow players to level their newly acquired Digimon without battles taking 6+ turns and needing to stop to visit the Pokemon center after each one. For both games, moves should be strengthed a bit, or defenses toned down, so neutral, non-Super Effective battles don't take 5-6 turns per mon, especially in Crystal around the 20s with mons still being forced to use Tackle or equivalent if they can't learn Headbutt/the elemental punches.
And all this is coming from someone who typically plays competitive pokemon exclusively in 1v1, 6 pokemon formats (much slower than VGC's 2v2, 4 pokemon format), and plays stall teams regularly, where individual battles can easily go an hour+, and even I think this pacing is way too slow.
The Digimon TCG hack regularly has 3-5 energy costs to do anything more than 10 damage and most mons seem to have more than 50 HP which means many turns are sitting there attaching an energy and doing nothing until you hit that point, and because of the varied energy costs of attacks, the enemy tends to just attach energy then pass cause they constantly attach the wrong energy types. Then when you finally get your 3-5 energy, it's still 2-3 turns to KO anything, so you're looking at a 4 prize game being a total of like 10-16 turns, which is just incredibly tedious. I can only imagine how long 6 prize games vs the bosses are. Being forced to include 24-30 energies in a deck to make sure you have enough of each type for the varied attacks without waiting multiple turns without an attachment is not fun and heavily limits deckbuilding. I feel like the game would be much better by either reducing energy costs overall, reducing health overall, or increasing damage overall. It's fine to have 3-5 turns of set up, but once set up, you should be one shotting everything to end the game, as that's still 6-8 turns for a 4 prize game. That or make it so that it takes 2-3 turns to KO something, but you can set up in 1-2 turns so that you're looking at 8-13 turns for a 4 prize game, which is personally still slow for my tastes but much better than the current system. It doesn't have to be set up and KO on turn 1 like current pokemon TCG, but the original GB game is much slower than current Pokemon TCG and even that is like, twice if not three times as fast as this rom hack.
Digimon Crystal is so mind-numbingly slow I had to quit playing it, since I could get my Digimon to lvl 30 and they STILL wouldn't have any good moves other than if they are lucky enough to learn TM moves, of which there are very few and with very little coverage early on. The best way to level without going past the Ghost Gym is to spam headbutt on trees for lvl 20 wild digimon fights, and that's still incredibly slow to reach 30. Seriously, Digimon should not have to reach level 30 to get their first STAB move, and have it be a move that's equivalent to like, Tackle but in their type. Like, why are even wild fights against sleeping mons that are lower level than you taking over 4 turns to finish if you don't have a STAB supereffective move, which most Digimon won't have? MetalKoromon doesn't get a STAB move until 15 when it evolves into Kokuwamon, where it learns Metal Claw, which is just Steel type Tackle, a move you start the game with. It doesn't learn an Electric type STAB move until 20 when it learns Thundershock, which is again, just Electric type Tackle. Even at 30, when it evolves into Andromon, it only just learns Spark since Thundershock, and Thunderpunch has long since been available at the Goldenrod store and is better than Spark. Why is Greymon still using Ember at lvl 30? Why does Dark Tyrannomon not have any STAB moves by lvl 24?
Starting Digimon Nova Red and the first route's most common mon to find by a large margin is Bombmon who just self destructs so if you want to level off of him you need to run back to the pokemon center after every fight or two? How could you have thought that was a good idea? Then Route 22 has Kuramon that lowers accuracy and poisons you, so the fight takes forever thanks to misses and forces you to go back just like fighting Bombmon, or it gives Poyomon, who transforms into you so the fight also still takes forever thanks to resistance to your STAB moves. Like, I see in the doc of all the digimon that Punimon becomes Chaosdramon, one of my favourites, so I figured I'd raise it but I need to split XP with my starter to get it any XP at all. At the start of the game. That's awful and making me want to quit outright, and I haven't even gotten past Viridian City. On top of that, for both Crystal and Nova Red, it feels like many, if not all, of the Digimon are on the slower XP profiles, where they need more to level up than the equivalent Pokemon on those routes/areas did, which only makes things even slower than they already are.
From reading through the threads of this and Crystal your reply to leveling being incredibly slow is "well, you're expected to be underleveled to the gyms for the challenge". That's just a "feels bad" way of making the game harder, especially since you're already buffing the gyms by giving them stronger BST Digimon and more coverage options in their movesets. Like, did you need to double dip that makes the games feel like giant slogs? What makes it so much worse is that the rest of the games discussed, as far as I can tell, are great. Good sprite work for a fan project, no obvious bugs, stable, runs smoothly on emulators both on PC and on mobile. Cheats don't seem to work, which is a shame cause that would sort of solve the slog to just have infinite rare candies to skip any of the ultra slow grinding.
If a player wants to challenge gyms while underleveled, they can do that even in the original Pokemon games. For players that want to challenge at equivalent levels, or even just level up their Digimon so that they aren't using Fresh/In-Training/Child anymore, it shouldn't take them 20+ hours to grind out to that point, then repeat that grind between each gym. I think forcing players to slow down to a snail's pace isn't good game design. It shouldn't take me 6 hours in Crystal to level up two Child level mons from 20 to 30 to get their Adult stages in the first place, and then their best move is still the Headbutt TM on top of that. Like, if we're assuming a curve of "starting with a mix of Fresh/In-Training, and ending with fighting the Elite Four with Ultimates" then knowing Pokemon's level curve, once you're hitting the mid-game you should have Adults on your team and starting to work on them going up to Perfect, not Rookies going up to Adults.
I feel like the rom hacks would be massively improved if the pacing of them were adjusted. You as a player can always slow down the pacing as long as forced XP share isn't on, but you can never speed it up without cheats. Other suggestions I think would improve Crystal at least, is having more than one digimon on some of the routes, and making use of the day/night cycle to change what digimon appear on the route. I haven't peeked into the code to see if I'm mistaken, but there's at least 3 routes/areas I can think of that have what seems to be literally a single Digimon in their encounter table not counting headbutting or fishing. I've also never noticed the encounter tables changing with Day/Night cycles either. For Nova Red, I think Self Destruct should be removed and replaced from Bombmon and Smokescreen should be removed from Kuramon, at the very least. Or even make it so Bombmon is much rarer than Curimon and Punimon, which would allow players to level their newly acquired Digimon without battles taking 6+ turns and needing to stop to visit the Pokemon center after each one. For both games, moves should be strengthed a bit, or defenses toned down, so neutral, non-Super Effective battles don't take 5-6 turns per mon, especially in Crystal around the 20s with mons still being forced to use Tackle or equivalent if they can't learn Headbutt/the elemental punches.
And all this is coming from someone who typically plays competitive pokemon exclusively in 1v1, 6 pokemon formats (much slower than VGC's 2v2, 4 pokemon format), and plays stall teams regularly, where individual battles can easily go an hour+, and even I think this pacing is way too slow.
![Digimon Nova Red ver. 3.1 [COMPLETED] [UPDATED 8.12.2022]](https://data.pokecommunity.com/attachments/69/69154-fb0d31d965a8cfc13b5d8a3ebc8ca938.jpg "Digimon Nova Red ver. 3.1 [COMPLETED] [UPDATED 8.12.2022]")
