So I finished the main story. There's still some Bonus Chapters to do, and maybe I'll do the level 255 battles. With that said, I'd like to give my thoughts on the game as a whole. I'll try to make it short.
I'll start with the negatives. This hack goes way too dark. I know the Kanto saga is based on the manga. What about the Orange Islands part? It feels like an attempt to not only match the tone of the Kanto saga, but to surpass it. With 2 giant storylines that sometimes overlapped but finished in different points, things were prone to getting ridiculous. The best description would be a roller coaster, lots of highs and lows. For a while, I thought the game would end on a high given how the one storyline wrapped up. Not the one that closed the Orange Islands saga, you know what I mean. The other storyline was wrapping up well until that one final tragedy. Bro, come on! That was not good and kind of pointless. It's a sour punctuation mark on the main story. At least it's not Dark Rising, there is structure and a lot of thought that went into the story. It's not worth digging for plotholes or anything, I'll show respect there. But man, why do you-know-who like that? I believe endings matter a lot and can nullify an entire story, dropping it from say an A grade to a C. This hack's ending is in that vein, but I have too much respect and/or generosity to trash it completely. That sums up my whole sentiment towards the hack. There are lots of complaints, nitpicks that I could list, but they're mostly washed away from the quality of work put into this large hack. Trashing it would make me feel bad anyway because Aethesthode put a lot into this hack. I'll give some quick complaints and nitpicks anyway.
1. I prefer "Gueron" over "Geuron," the spelling is weird.
2. The theme of death permeates this hack way too much.
3. The last image of a certain girl after she died towards the end of the game was too much. I loved
and seeing that last image of her made me say out loud, "Jeez." Positive though, the hack can illicit genuine emotional responses from me.
4. Blue got on my nerves quite often, but she ended up being decent.
5. Red's dream with all the women was the most entertaining part of the hack, more of that humor would've been nice. I'm a sucker for lighthearted stuff. Pokemon's lighthearted and often hackers go the complete opposite. Most fail. This hack didn't fail though, but that kind of levity would've been nice. There's humor in many instances here, but nothing compared to that dream.
6. Not so much a nitpick, this game's too easy. I let it go because some of my favorite hacks are easy. Also, this hack puts story over action content like battling and catching Pokemon, so difficulty on the latter didn't seem to be a priority, that's fine. I'm not counting the level 255 stuff, that's just another topic.
7. Speaking of the 255 stuff, my team currently are in the 70s. Grinding sucks, and with this hack's level curve, I'm not excited about grinding. This complaint would be stronger if I was grinding my team to level 100. I haven't, at least not yet.
8. No care put into music. I assume it's a space thing, trying to fit in as much to a 32MB ROM. I play muted anyway, but it is lame that most of the trainer battle music is the regular FRLG one, even for gym leaders and League battles. Also, areas with no music, which seems to be happen more often in the Orange Islands half of the game.
9. Several bonus chapters are pure filler. The ones with no action (battles mainly) often don't compensate for dialogue-only content. I appreciate the effort though, I won't harp on this.
10. Some Fakemon designs are weird, this includes the custom-made regional forms.
11. Having to stick to a team and not switch out team members is my playstyle. This hack has so many Pokemon that said playstyle is a bit more difficult. I think more appealing Pokemon being earlier in the game would be nice. I really liked some Orange Islands regional variants, but if I got one, I'd have to grind it up at least 10 levels to get the Pokemon to my team's levels. Grinding, yuck.
12. The lack of a bike, fine. The lack of flying sucks. The teleporting stuff is not the best compensation, but I get the limitations. I'm sure if Aethesthode could, there would be flying and a map. Nitpick, don't take this too seriously, I'm sure loads of people made this complaint.
I might have other complaints, but I suddenly don't feel like coming up with more negative stuff. Positives? The characters are mostly conceived and depicted very well. Red and Green get some great development, the evil people are good at being evil. Some good characterization for Jessie, James and Meowth, especially for the first 2. I loved Pink, I loved Looker. The heel and face turns were done very well. Some of the dialogue is silly, some of it is really good. The graphics are great (Red's running cycle is a bit lacking though). Nitpicks about the level curve and post-game grinding aside, I do like that I don't have to grind for the main story. I had to grind Dratini, but that was because I kept it from evolving until it learned Outrage and Dragon Dance. Once Dragonite came forth, dedicated grinding was no longer necessary. I did have a few Lucky Eggs though, that mattered a lot. Some map designs are great, some character designs are pretty good. Some of the bonus chapters are pretty great, not every one though, I made that clear earlier. A lot of good Fakemon designs, already mentioned some of the designs being weird. Interesting typings as well.
As far as suggestions to improve the game, I don't have any that's pressing. I don't want to make a plea about toning down the story or tending to my complaints. This looks like a complete game anyway, and with content coming on the way, the most pressing thing I could ask for is just bug fixes. I don't have any unique bugs to report anyway, people probably already brought them up and I already mentioned one recently.
So yeah, it might seem like there's more complaints and nitpicks over positive comments, but I want to make clear that this was a long playthrough worth doing. It's a high quality hack and I respect Aethesthode a lot for making this. That respect washes over my negative feelings, for the most part. It's one of the best hacks I've played, and I've gone through well over 100 hacks. It's definitely the most popular and biggest hack I had yet to play, knocked something off the proverbial bucket list.
When playing hacks, I type my thoughts down and also treat it as a walkthrough of sorts. With how large this hack is, it's easily the longest write-up I've made. Currently at 73k+ words, over 400k characters. So condensing that to this one post is an accomplishment for me.
I assume Aethesthode is from the UK. "Mum, bugger off, grey," other examples point to that. I find that interesting.
Tl:dr, It's a great hack. I have my gripes with it, especially on the main story end, but there's way too much effort put into this that the respect for that washes over most of my negative thoughts. Thank you Aethesthode for making this hack.
Edit: holy crap, I totally forgot to thank Allen Ceedos for the walkthrough. It was so helpful, and it was nice to read your opinions on the hack sprinkled throughout the walkthrough. Honestly, I probably would not have played this hack without the walkthrough, that's how essential it was for me. Thank you again.
![[PokeCommunity.com] Pokémon Adventure - Red Chapter NEW BETA + EXPANSION](https://data.pokecommunity.com/attachments/11/11458-7f95e16bdc850e707d811cd060ac562b.jpg)
![[PokeCommunity.com] Pokémon Adventure - Red Chapter NEW BETA + EXPANSION](https://data.pokecommunity.com/attachments/11/11461-71baaec07ea72ccb0654f6fdf8dbbf56.jpg)
