I picked this hack up and its ridiculous. I'm playing on normal Minimum Grinding (which btw, still requires lots of grinding if you ever need to change mons, even with the Lucky Eggs you get after what, the third gym IIRC?). Just beat Pokemon Tower. And I have to ask, why are all boss fights beefed up, even in this mode? I thought EVs weren't at thing? And maybe its a hack thing, but RNG seems to *not* be RNG; multiple times I've had double defense drops from Crunch from GC Giovanni's Mega Kanga on the *same exact Pokemon*. Whether it was through save states or hard resets.
And I sure do love thinking a neutral typing with a SE move can do good just to get swept because they used Swords Dance once and was able to outspeed my *entire Speed+ nature team*. Only managed to get past that Infernape through sheer luck and somehow not dying long enough to not proc Focus Band.
I get it, difficulty hacks are meant to be difficult. But if you're gonna put it on the same level as needing competitive level strats via utilizing status ailments every fight, pivoting until that one moment, and *somehow* surviving to use your own stat increasing moves, then don't call it normal mode. Call it Puzzle League mode since thats what every fight turns into, figuring out the puzzle. Cause it sucks when you have a boss on their last mon, you got 3 left all at half health, just to lose because you didn't know the next move in the puzzle.
>inb4 'just switch to easy mode'
Why? If normal is meant for general audiences and hard mode meant for the actual hardcore players, then normal should be just that. Having to go find new mons to replace on your already well rounded team is not "normal", having to change movesets, natures, and abilities is not "normal".
>'but people have beaten this game with mono types'
Yeah, and they probably spend way too much time calculating everything, catching and building teams, and bringing that up doesn't counter my argument either.
I can understand wanting players to think more than just 'use SE damage move', but making every boss past Surge basically a puzzle sim on a competitive level is not fun.
Look, I'm an average joe when it comes to Pokémon and even I can see that what you're saying is complete nonsense.
The game has many difficulty options, including easy and easy + min grinding mode.
I played this with a friend that was quite illiterate about Pokémon and me, who only played official pokemon games before and was getting this as my first rom hack, and none of us had any issues at all. Sure, we lost a few times but nothing I would flag as "total progress blocking"... It was just slightly harder than a official pokemon game.
This is literally not gate keeping anyone. Maybe only those who can't read enough to chose the difficulty.
I'm calling bull on this. "Lost a few times" indicates you're either blatantly lying, or you looked up every boss fight beforehand to prepare (which runs counter to your statement that this is *your first rom hack* since a lot of people enjoy these hacks blind). I've got probably close, it not over, 100 wipes total and as I said above, I just got past Pokemon Tower. That's not "a few times".