Emerald hack: Pokémon Emerald Horizons - Emerald Difficulty Hack [Complete, v1.16 ft. New Rocket Storyline, Boss Gauntlet, Gen 1-8, Side Quests, and QoL features]

[Starglowing]

You clearly put some time into this, but saying a 6/10 difficulty is a joke. Clearly, many many people have already told you this, but I just thought I'd add on to the pile. It is very easy to make a game hard. Search smogon and give everything competitive movesets. Give everything a choice item, sitrus berry, or focus sash. Give early poocheyana every elemental fang. It's harder to make a game that is actually properly balanced and fun -- an actual 6/10. You clearly just wanted to take the easy path of spamming competitive movesets on every single boss fight, rather than actually taking time to critically think about what would make a cohesive level and difficulty curve. You just made a carbon copy of every other difficulty hack. I'm annoyed this wasted my time. Edit your post to change the difficulty or add trainer docs so people can see how stupid the game is before starting.

 

[SamStrike]

I didn't like the double battle with the magma guy that has three pokemon with 4x weakness to water against the two aqua guy. I am all for the enemy using legendaries and having competitive teams, but forcing the player to fight alone with 3 pokemons in a double battle against a full team of 6 doesn't make sense to me; it's not fun, just artificial difficulty that forces you to find a way to cheese the fight. I would suggest to rework the fight, or at least, make the teammate more useful. A fight is fun when the opponent is strong and has a good team, it's not fun when the difficulty aspect is created by handicapping the player instead. It doesn't feel good to purposely restrict the player in a battle just to make the fight more difficult. Finding a solution to win wasn't exactly exciting, I was just glad it was over.

This is further aggraviated by the fact that you need to spend 5m each time going back and forth to try a new pokemon for the battle; that can be fixed by placing a pc or something near the fight so you can try different pokemons right there instead of having to go back to the pokecenter each time, otherwise it's a huge time waster.
In the end I was able to do it by using Alola-Ninetails, Garvantula and Mega-Swampert, primarily because of luck by getting the enemy pokemons double frozen with blizzard; but it took an insane amount of tries and luck.

There is a difference between difficult fun and difficult tedious, this case was more the latter. I saw multiple other people also mention the same thing in some comments and they are kinda right. The same can be said for some of the fight early game; don't give the trainers tools that the player doesn't have access to to inflate the difficulty; the poochyena with multiple elemental fangs being the primary example I can think of. However, only those two fight seemed problematic to me, every other one is masterfully crafted to be both fun and difficult, and I really enjoyed that. I am about to get the league now!

Ignore the assholes that only spout insults, those people are not worth listening to, but some people are giving very good feedback and please do take those in mind. This can be a perfect hack with just a few changes.

P.S. The documentation is lacking where to get Lagging Tail and the Iron Ball items

 

[hoopyfreud]

I guess I'll throw my hat in just to affirm, as someone who's taken on everything this hack has to offer - it's definitely a 9/10 in difficulty or so for me. Which I like, but I do think that "6/10" dramatically understates the challenge. Might be different for you @BrandonXL because you have all the trainer info in front of you, but I'd say that ~50% of the major fights in this game *cannot* be played blind, and I think that that deserves at least an 8 on its own.

 

[Billy Boy]

Any PokeMon in this rom hack have their types changed?

 

[hoopyfreud]

Any PokeMon in this rom hack have their types changed?

Fairy type has been added, but other than that, no.

 

[SamStrike]

Just finished it! It was really fun! I especially loved how easy it was to be able to get new pokemons and get them on the same level as my team to try them out for new comps! Amazing hack!

 

[hoopyfreud]

I didn't like the double battle with the magma guy that has three pokemon with 4x weakness to water against the two aqua guy. I am all for the enemy using legendaries and having competitive teams, but forcing the player to fight alone with 3 pokemons in a double battle against a full team of 6 doesn't make sense to me; it's not fun, just artificial difficulty that forces you to find a way to cheese the fight. I would suggest to rework the fight, or at least, make the teammate more useful. A fight is fun when the opponent is strong and has a good team, it's not fun when the difficulty aspect is created by handicapping the player instead. It doesn't feel good to purposely restrict the player in a battle just to make the fight more difficult. Finding a solution to win wasn't exactly exciting, I was just glad it was over.

This is further aggraviated by the fact that you need to spend 5m each time going back and forth to try a new pokemon for the battle; that can be fixed by placing a pc or something near the fight so you can try different pokemons right there instead of having to go back to the pokecenter each time, otherwise it's a huge time waster.
In the end I was able to do it by using Alola-Ninetails, Garvantula and Mega-Swampert, primarily because of luck by getting the enemy pokemons double frozen with blizzard; but it took an insane amount of tries and luck.

There is a difference between difficult fun and difficult tedious, this case was more the latter. I saw multiple other people also mention the same thing in some comments and they are kinda right. The same can be said for some of the fight early game; don't give the trainers tools that the player doesn't have access to to inflate the difficulty; the poochyena with multiple elemental fangs being the primary example I can think of. However, only those two fight seemed problematic to me, every other one is masterfully crafted to be both fun and difficult, and I really enjoyed that. I am about to get the league now!

Ignore the assholes that only spout insults, those people are not worth listening to, but some people are giving very good feedback and please do take those in mind. This can be a perfect hack with just a few changes.

P.S. The documentation is lacking where to get Lagging Tail and the Iron Ball items

Re: your PS, some Mawiles near Fallarbor hold the Iron Ball (you can find them with DexNav), and I believe wild slowpokes can hold a lagging tail.

E: I can confirm that the easiest place to get one is with a Lickitung in the grass patch east of Lavaridge on Route 112

 

[idunkna]

@BrandonXL sending the HOF pic of my 2 solo runs here. Did them in Challenge mode (it was painful with dozens of trials & abusing save state a bit)
😄
Have loved everything about the game so far, especially when you included all the QoLs & removing grinding ❤️
Except for one thing: rare candy - still has to grind for level though

I know wild pkm level curve is quite high, so you'll eventually reach the cap. But it STILL takes time GRINDING. Would not hurt the gameplay/ difficulty at all since there's always a level cap. There are hundreds of pkm that I'd like to try, but ended up being lazy since I don't want to level them up again.
Would love if it includes features like Infinite Rare Candy & Toggle Max-Repel, so people could just focus on trying different pkm & team formation instead.

Sorry for whining. You did an amazing job 🤘 There's just this 1 thing that I think would make it perfect.

 

[BrandonXL]

@BrandonXL sending the HOF pic of my 2 solo runs here. Did them in Challenge mode (it was painful with dozens of trials & abusing save state a bit)
😄
Have loved everything about the game so far, especially when you included all the QoLs & removing grinding ❤️
Except for one thing: rare candy - still has to grind for level though

I know wild pkm level curve is quite high, so you'll eventually reach the cap. But it STILL takes time GRINDING. Would not hurt the gameplay/ difficulty at all since there's always a level cap. There are hundreds of pkm that I'd like to try, but ended up being lazy since I don't want to level them up again.
Would love if it includes features like Infinite Rare Candy & Toggle Max-Repel, so people could just focus on trying different pkm & team formation instead.

Sorry for whining. You did an amazing job 🤘 There's just this 1 thing that I think would make it perfect.

Lol, so the Challenge Mode stuff was made so that people DON'T end up soloing the E4. I'm genuinely curious about your strategy, particularly since each battle is

Spoiler:

doubles.[/SPOILERS]

 

[idunkna]

Lol, so the Challenge Mode stuff was made so that people DON'T end up soloing the E4. I'm genuinely curious about your strategy, particularly since each battle is

Spoiler:

doubles.[/SPOILERS]

Haha, I know. I just used a "cheap" strategy which I succeeded with Unbound in Insane mode before (where they added double battles in E4 too)
-Kleavor: Double Team, Sword Dance, Rock Slide, X-Scissor
-Overqwil: Minimize, Thunder Wave, Acupressure, Crunch

So both of which abuse the missing chance by maxing evasiveness. The key is to survive 1st turn without getting 1-2 HKO (for which I let them hold Lax Incense + use save state...). After 1-2 double team/ minimize setups, the rest are easy. Yeah, it's cheap & not something to be proud of; but that's what I tried with every rom I played - Soloing the E4 to see if that's possible

But to rate 6/10 in difficulty compared to Radical Red is too underrated. The E4 was equally over-spamming with legendaries, so I don't feel that part was fair. Would put that a 8/10 instead - Feeling just like you walk into Uber while only allowed to use OU/ UU team. Wish it could be challenging in terms of strategies, instead of using overpowered beasts that users don't have access to. Even when I beat it & it's a great rom to me, I feel reluctant to introduce this to my friends, who are more like casual players (unless you meant to make it a top difficulty hack that limit players in the first place)

 

[Feef2332]

 

[Feef2332]

Lol, so the Challenge Mode stuff was made so that people DON'T end up soloing the E4. I'm genuinely curious about your strategy, particularly since each battle is

Spoiler:

doubles.[/SPOILERS]

Hey brandon, is there a battle frontier? Great hack btw. I've been shiny hunting like crazy and grinding just to try new teams out. Cheers.

 

[BrandonXL]

Hey brandon, is there a battle frontier? Great hack btw. I've been shiny hunting like crazy and grinding just to try new teams out. Cheers.

Hi, first off, thank you for playing the game through :) even after almost a year, it's still rewarding to see and add these HoF entries in. Battle Factory and Battle Tower are coming as part of the last update; I've been working hard to get out the last update, but there's still a ways to go before it's out. I'm hoping to get things finished before the end of the month!

 

[Feef2332]

Hi, first off, thank you for playing the game through :) even after almost a year, it's still rewarding to see and add these HoF entries in. Battle Factory and Battle Tower are coming as part of the last update; I've been working hard to get out the last update, but there's still a ways to go before it's out. I'm hoping to get things finished before the end of the month!

Awesome. Looking forward to it! I am just missing 3 more quests. for now im shiny hunting and completing the dex.

 

[idunkna]

@BrandonXL may I add another suggestion that you could add a line saying the rom name & version like "Emerald Horizons 1.11" right underneath that "Welcome to the HoF"?

I have so many HoF pics in my PC & phone right now from different roms. Would be great if there's a text to help me instantly navigate your rom, and remind me what a wonderful time I had playing it. Just don't want it to get lost among other HoF pics

 

[BrandonXL]

@BrandonXL may I add another suggestion that you could add a line saying the rom name & version like "Emerald Horizons 1.11" right underneath that "Welcome to the HoF"?

I have so many HoF pics in my PC & phone right now from different roms. Would be great if there's a text to help me instantly navigate your rom, and remind me what a wonderful time I had playing it. Just don't want it to get lost among other HoF pics

This is a wonderful idea and will be rolling out in v1.12! There's still a bit more to clean up (since, assuming no bugs, this will be the last update), but thank you so much for the suggestion!

 

[Mochorro]

Done with the game! So difficult, made me sweat a lot in many battles. I missed the Desert Underpass quest for Eternatus, though, have looked for it for quite a while, and could not find it, maybe I skipped the text telling me where it is, I don't know, but I went even to that alternate dimension where you fought May, but no, it's not there, route 111, couldn't find it either. Caught all the other Legendaries (Ho-Oh, Lugia, the birds, the regis, the genies, Diancie, Latios, Latias, Kyogre, Heatran, etc.) For E4 it is a bit dirty I used so many legendaries, but it is what it is, was tired of using bad Pokémon like Alolan Persian, Grimmersnarl, etc. during the adventure. To be fair, Pokémon like Lanturn, Gastrodon, Alolan Ninetales, and Jellicent have been quite useful in many battles. Donphan and Mudsdale were also great especially early in the game, where I struggled a lot and suffered so many losses until I could finally get some more Pokémon. The grind trainer helped a lot, I had like 40 Pokémon at lv 100, was a bit annoying training them all, but they had their uses. Mega Gyarados was the MVP, so many sweeps with Dragon Dance, they went for Rock Moves so many times, and Mega Evolving fooled the AI a lot.



IMO difficulty is higher than 6/10, but I had fun and went till the end!, just a bit burnt by the end with some of the fights, especially the ones where the opponent gets stat boosts out of nowhere in legendary Pokémon. I really liked Poké Vial, and when you unlock more uses for it, it is amazing, as I had to travel back to Pokémon Centers a lot of times when I only had one use.

 

[AllFiery]

Hello! just downloaded the game and I currently at 3 badges! I'm enjoying the game so far and I would like to thank you for making this game!

After reading more about the game, I saw that there are some pokemons that are not obtainable and one of them is my favorite mythical. So, I'd like to ask if these pokemons will soon be added or will have a special way to obtain or are there no plans to add them in whatsoever?

 

[hoopyfreud]

Done with the game! So difficult, made me sweat a lot in many battles. I missed the Desert Underpass quest for Eternatus, though, have looked for it for quite a while, and could not find it, maybe I skipped the text telling me where it is, I don't know, but I went even to that alternate dimension where you fought May, but no, it's not there, route 111, couldn't find it either. Caught all the other Legendaries (Ho-Oh, Lugia, the birds, the regis, the genies, Diancie, Latios, Latias, Kyogre, Heatran, etc.) For E4 it is a bit dirty I used so many legendaries, but it is what it is, was tired of using bad Pokémon like Alolan Persian, Grimmersnarl, etc. during the adventure. To be fair, Pokémon like Lanturn, Gastrodon, Alolan Ninetales, and Jellicent have been quite useful in many battles. Donphan and Mudsdale were also great especially early in the game, where I struggled a lot and suffered so many losses until I could finally get some more Pokémon. The grind trainer helped a lot, I had like 40 Pokémon at lv 100, was a bit annoying training them all, but they had their uses. Mega Gyarados was the MVP, so many sweeps with Dragon Dance, they went for Rock Moves so many times, and Mega Evolving fooled the AI a lot.

View attachment 162364

IMO difficulty is higher than 6/10, but I had fun and went till the end!, just a bit burnt by the end with some of the fights, especially the ones where the opponent gets stat boosts out of nowhere in legendary Pokémon. I really liked Poké Vial, and when you unlock more uses for it, it is amazing, as I had to travel back to Pokémon Centers a lot of times when I only had one use.

The Desert Underpass is in the usual spot - https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Desert_Underpass (link in case you don't want to spoil yourself). Eternatus is at the very back of the cave.

 

[Mochorro]

The Desert Underpass is in the usual spot - https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Desert_Underpass (link in case you don't want to spoil yourself). Eternatus is at the very back of the cave.

Ahhh, ok, ok, didn't know that, I played vanilla Emerald in Spanish back in the day, didn't know the English name of that place. Will beat that part then before being done with the game! Thank you!