There's a bad bug on One Island where if I surf and encounter a Pokemon, I can't get back on land. The surfing looks goofy too because the Pokemon sprite is gone, looks like my body's surfing. Actually, in general, any instance of you exiting the current screen, like say you check on your Pokemon or bag while surfing, prevents you from getting back on land. I don't have any repels, I'll have to cheat them in because I can't just surf up Kindle Road and not encounter a Pokemon, which would cause the bug to happen.
This is extremely frustrating. With all due respect, I can't wait to finish this hack because I'm at my boiling point. I don't like it. It's fascinating to read positive comments about it. Maybe the updates did fix the horrendous difficulty of the early-game, but even after that, there's just more layers to this onion that I'm not liking at all.
Edit: the cop in the Celadon Police Department won't trade me Braviary, despite having a Skarmory to give.
Edit 2: After finishing all the story stuff in Pokemon Tower, trying to go back to my house triggers the very first outdoor event in the game, where the cops come and they talk about an explosion and how I'm the "culript," spelling error in the text.
Edit 3: Wow, what you had May say towards the end of the game is...kind of insensitive in 2019 times. I'm acting like the PC police, but come on. I believe you when you said this was started in 2013, such a statement from her would be slightly more acceptable then.
Edit 4: Finished it.
Final thoughts? I don't think it's a good hack. The difficulty mellowed out big time after the first 2 gyms and despite desperately wanting a Vs Seeker and wanting 2 more team members but fearing the grind, I got by with just a quartet. Garchomp, who I couldn't nickname because my nickname didn't save for some reason and I can't find the Name Rater. Alakazam, Conkeldurr, and the traded Pokemon that was my early-game savior as a Zorua, Zoroark. Too much Intimidate, wild routes feel scarce when most of the game is just storyline battles. Team Nihilus, gym battles, the Clergy, cops, it was excessive. It's obvious that you took a bunch of random trainers that would offer EXP with the Vs Seeker, and turned them into one-off storyline battles, endless amounts of grunts and infected trainers, the "demons" in various cave locations. It's such a story-heavy hack that I didn't get the traditional Pokemon sense of wild exploration or even a freedom to go out. You just follow the story and that's it. So convoluted, forced seriousness with a strange tonal shift into random expletive-filled dialogue. Then it gets worse with random NPC dialogue being mostly pointless expletive-filled drivel. As Sakakii stated, the profanity is too much for my taste. As I said earlier on Edit 3, you claim this was started in 2013. I could see that with the language used, the "F" word used so flippantly. I'm not talking about the 4-letter F-word, I'm talking about a certain slur. When you have me act like a PC police, which is never my intention, you're doing something wrong.
At first, I thought I would complain about the difficulty because it was so rough at first, until I brought up this complaint and you claimed to fix it. I wonder if that made the difficulty take a 180 because it got so easy. The final battles were depressingly easy. The last two before the final final final battle (way too many "final" battle teases), I'll admit was a bit of a hassle, but once I figured out their types and the ability of the 2nd one, it was easy. You know who I'm talking about, the ultimate evil that challenged me. If I had more answers to it, this would have been even easier.
Positives? The difficulty is low, but I prefer that over something way too hard. The inclusion of protagonists from the canon Gen 2-5 games are nice, but then their dialogue proceeds to suck, especially my beloved May. What else? Good selection of Pokemon, I guess. I lucked out with my quartet, but where was TM26? That would've been great for Garchomp. Honestly, I can't think of other positives.
More negatives: this should've had the Physical/Special split. Haxorus is a perfect example of a Pokemon wasted by the lack of the split. At least work around it, you didn't, you had Haxorus have Dragon Claw in trainer battles. Haxorus' Special Attack is 60, that's atrocious. Even though Haxorus in this game would spam Dragon Dance/Swords Dance, I don't think it ever KO'd me. But hey, give it Intimidate, because there's just not enough of trainers using Intimidate. At least my Zoroark had Intimidate, but that's just 1, you have trainers that have at least 2 Pokemon with Intimidate, and it happens a crap ton of times. Even though there's a good selection of Pokemon, the selection overall is pretty small. I did have repel up for a good chunk of the last quarter of the game, but it didn't feel like there was a wide selection of Pokemon.
Hacks like this make me so back and forth with new story hacks. I'd rather play the same Fire Red story over and over again. It's serviceable, dialogue that doesn't kill my brain cells, and the focus for me is gameplay, I can keep playing Fire Red and basic enhancement hacks of that game and Emerald for that matter. This hack just makes me more hesitant for new story hacks. That being said, I do plan to play a new story hack soon, but the point still stands. When you have a story that you're supposed to take seriously, I think that's the case for this hack, I'm much more analytical about it, and if a story doesn't impress me, I'm going to bash it. I won't bash old Pokemon game stories, they're serviceable and inoffensive. Hack creators who take it a step further risk me not liking them, I'm more prone to judge it. With this hack, I don't like the story. There's just too much. Endless dialogue, which is a Dark Rising theme that I hate. Oh, Dark Rising comparison, sorry, that might be too mean. The attempt at humor is so out-of-place and just misses the mark completely.
I hope this is taken as constructive criticism, and there's no ignoring or censoring by a moderator or whatever. I stand by my scathing review of this hack. It sucks, I don't like it. Have a good weekend.
Edit 5: the sprites are ugly. I can't believe I didn't mention that sooner.
