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Video version: https://youtu.be/Nisqt4zNryU
The Pokemon franchise obviously has a HUGE fanbase
This is the cause of the franchise itself being ginormous, but also because the fans genuinely care about the gameplay and the mechanics of the respective Pokemon games.
This is why a lot of romhacks and fangames were made. Both have the premise of taking the original Pokemon games and their mechanics, and transforming them into something of their own, giving their personal spin and own story and mechanics to their new "Pokemon game".
Having played and reviewed a lot of these particular romhacks as well as fangames, I would like to give my take on how fangames compare to romhacks, what their distinctive differences are and which of the two would in most instances be preferable.
As far as I know, the world of romhacks is a lot broader than the world of fangames. But that might just be because I am personally more familiar with romhacks.
In the making of a romhack, people take the code of an original Pokemon game, the 3rd generation games being the most prominently hacked, and change it to their liking using certain tile editors or other programs, thus creating their own unique world.
The big difference between romhacks and fangames is that fangames are ENTIRELY made from 0. You create your own entire game, with barely any use of "tile-creators'', or any premade graphics. This costs a lot more work, and these games usually take a LOT more time, but if you manage to pull it off somehow… you might be able to create a game with a LONG-standing legacy, and features and a story that are so advanced and unique that it creates a whole new dimension to your game… like with Pokemon Insurgence, which is still near unanimously known today as the greatest fan-made Pokemon game ever.
Overall, if you know what you're doing, there is mighty potential in both of them. But that is not to say that I, or most people, don't have a bit of a preference. Let's take a bit of a deeper look into what could make a romhack good or bad versus what could make a fangame good or bad.
Romhacks allow you less freedom, definitely. There are a lot of things you can change, but the general look of a Pokemon game will always stay there, and adding entirely new mechanics is almost always a huge hassle. You simply don't have the particular option of adding or writing a new feature or mechanic into a game without using help from a program which is limited and doesn't always have the features you want.
This means that any REAL creative features are either not possible, or not working completely smoothly and how they are supposed to, adding a bit of "staleness" to romhacking if you don't know exactly what you are doing. As we are quite far into romhacking and it's nature and kind, a lot of these problems are to be apprehended if correctly assessed, and because of that, great features like mega evolution or items from all the way up to 7th gen are at this point possible, like what is featured in Pokemon Radical Red.
So yeah, when it comes to freedom, you can definitely notice that fangames contain more of a "original-game" vibe, and this can be a big plus. If you take a look at some of the more accomplished fan games like Pokemon Uranium, Pokemon Reborn or Pokemon Insurgence, you may notice that these games are successful, and, at that point, EXTREMELY successful, because their entire features and mechanics are almost entirely distinct from their source.
Although you are still definitely playing a Pokemon game, pretty much everything is able to be modified, as the game is written and made directly from the hands of the creator, giving them a deep sense of control. From here, you may notice that loads of graphics as well as mechanics in fan games are extremely free, advanced, and may use a lot of things originating from other games, as it is so modifiable. This is what may make fangames to have greater overall potential then any romhack would really have.
This is also where the negatives from the fangames come in though. Because the games are so much made from the core, and don't really use any of the original Pokemon bases in their gameplay, the feel of the gameplay compared to any other Pokemon game may feel a bit… stiff
Pokemon has actually done a great job with the flow of their games. People complain about random encounters and about long, tedious battles; which is all fair. But one thing they can't deny is that the flow always keeps the same in these battles, because they have made sure that no text-space or frames are really wasted whenever you're in battle. This is simply not the case with a lot of fangames.
Because of this, romhacks benefit greatly from their original Pokemon-based core and the fact that the momentum in battles and the overworld that every Pokemon fan has gotten used to, is still there. When playing a fangame, you just notice that however accurate the depiction of "Pokemon" is, you are not playing the real thing, and that can simply be bothersome to a lot of people, myself included.
In general, it's just hard to perfect a flow in a fangame. There's always going to be a little thing off from the original, and no matter how small, it's always going to be noticeable. This obviously doesn't make the game "bad", but it can be something other parts of the game have to REALLY make up for for the game to still be worth playing. This has obviously happened plenty, as games like Pokemon Insurgence or Reborn have still made a HUGE impact on the entire fangame as well as romhacking scenes, and they can still VERY much be worth it.
So, in conclusion, are romhacks or fangames by definition better than each other? Obviously not. Both can have insane potential and make for some amazing games that unite people to work on the things in Pokemon that GameFreak hasn't been able to.
With romhacks, you will always keep that momentum and flow that made people fall in love with Pokemon. But you are always going to be stuck with a certain limitation on how creative you can make your hack. When playing a fangame, there is no creative limit to how crazy you want to make your game, but you will never truly capture the "Pokemon feel", no matter how close your game may resemble such.
I believe both categories have great potential and have made some excellent games, and I hope they will both continue to do so.
The Pokemon franchise obviously has a HUGE fanbase
This is the cause of the franchise itself being ginormous, but also because the fans genuinely care about the gameplay and the mechanics of the respective Pokemon games.
This is why a lot of romhacks and fangames were made. Both have the premise of taking the original Pokemon games and their mechanics, and transforming them into something of their own, giving their personal spin and own story and mechanics to their new "Pokemon game".
Having played and reviewed a lot of these particular romhacks as well as fangames, I would like to give my take on how fangames compare to romhacks, what their distinctive differences are and which of the two would in most instances be preferable.
As far as I know, the world of romhacks is a lot broader than the world of fangames. But that might just be because I am personally more familiar with romhacks.
In the making of a romhack, people take the code of an original Pokemon game, the 3rd generation games being the most prominently hacked, and change it to their liking using certain tile editors or other programs, thus creating their own unique world.
The big difference between romhacks and fangames is that fangames are ENTIRELY made from 0. You create your own entire game, with barely any use of "tile-creators'', or any premade graphics. This costs a lot more work, and these games usually take a LOT more time, but if you manage to pull it off somehow… you might be able to create a game with a LONG-standing legacy, and features and a story that are so advanced and unique that it creates a whole new dimension to your game… like with Pokemon Insurgence, which is still near unanimously known today as the greatest fan-made Pokemon game ever.
Overall, if you know what you're doing, there is mighty potential in both of them. But that is not to say that I, or most people, don't have a bit of a preference. Let's take a bit of a deeper look into what could make a romhack good or bad versus what could make a fangame good or bad.
Romhacks allow you less freedom, definitely. There are a lot of things you can change, but the general look of a Pokemon game will always stay there, and adding entirely new mechanics is almost always a huge hassle. You simply don't have the particular option of adding or writing a new feature or mechanic into a game without using help from a program which is limited and doesn't always have the features you want.
This means that any REAL creative features are either not possible, or not working completely smoothly and how they are supposed to, adding a bit of "staleness" to romhacking if you don't know exactly what you are doing. As we are quite far into romhacking and it's nature and kind, a lot of these problems are to be apprehended if correctly assessed, and because of that, great features like mega evolution or items from all the way up to 7th gen are at this point possible, like what is featured in Pokemon Radical Red.
So yeah, when it comes to freedom, you can definitely notice that fangames contain more of a "original-game" vibe, and this can be a big plus. If you take a look at some of the more accomplished fan games like Pokemon Uranium, Pokemon Reborn or Pokemon Insurgence, you may notice that these games are successful, and, at that point, EXTREMELY successful, because their entire features and mechanics are almost entirely distinct from their source.
Although you are still definitely playing a Pokemon game, pretty much everything is able to be modified, as the game is written and made directly from the hands of the creator, giving them a deep sense of control. From here, you may notice that loads of graphics as well as mechanics in fan games are extremely free, advanced, and may use a lot of things originating from other games, as it is so modifiable. This is what may make fangames to have greater overall potential then any romhack would really have.
This is also where the negatives from the fangames come in though. Because the games are so much made from the core, and don't really use any of the original Pokemon bases in their gameplay, the feel of the gameplay compared to any other Pokemon game may feel a bit… stiff
Pokemon has actually done a great job with the flow of their games. People complain about random encounters and about long, tedious battles; which is all fair. But one thing they can't deny is that the flow always keeps the same in these battles, because they have made sure that no text-space or frames are really wasted whenever you're in battle. This is simply not the case with a lot of fangames.
Because of this, romhacks benefit greatly from their original Pokemon-based core and the fact that the momentum in battles and the overworld that every Pokemon fan has gotten used to, is still there. When playing a fangame, you just notice that however accurate the depiction of "Pokemon" is, you are not playing the real thing, and that can simply be bothersome to a lot of people, myself included.
In general, it's just hard to perfect a flow in a fangame. There's always going to be a little thing off from the original, and no matter how small, it's always going to be noticeable. This obviously doesn't make the game "bad", but it can be something other parts of the game have to REALLY make up for for the game to still be worth playing. This has obviously happened plenty, as games like Pokemon Insurgence or Reborn have still made a HUGE impact on the entire fangame as well as romhacking scenes, and they can still VERY much be worth it.
So, in conclusion, are romhacks or fangames by definition better than each other? Obviously not. Both can have insane potential and make for some amazing games that unite people to work on the things in Pokemon that GameFreak hasn't been able to.
With romhacks, you will always keep that momentum and flow that made people fall in love with Pokemon. But you are always going to be stuck with a certain limitation on how creative you can make your hack. When playing a fangame, there is no creative limit to how crazy you want to make your game, but you will never truly capture the "Pokemon feel", no matter how close your game may resemble such.
I believe both categories have great potential and have made some excellent games, and I hope they will both continue to do so.
