FireRed hack: Pokemon Flare - Final Version Released! (1.02 as of 1/23/19)
- Thread starter mlem
- Start date
- 2
- Posts
- 6
- Years
- Age 25
- Earth
- Seen Dec 1, 2023
So I just wanted to drop in and give a sort of rant / sort of review I guess of this hack because oh boy, I did not have a good time. Also yes I know this is a hack from a while back, I'm just finally getting around to actually finishing it.
IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THIS HACK BLIND, DON'T READ THIS BECAUSE IT CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS..
The level scaling and mon variety of trainers in this hack (especially in early game) is very unbalanced. Trainers constantly have level increases that outdo your mons constantly if you are not using the exp all. If you DO use the Exp All then you overlevel the trainers. This is only SORT of remedied by the time you get to late game where trainers start to more consistently have similar level pokemon but then there are random jumps like the dragon rocket trainer before Giovanni in Cerulean Cave. Stuff like Giovanni having a level 50 Articuno, the level 30 Hypno in Berry Forest (easy to deal with though), and trainers in early game having fully evolved pokemon when you will have 0 evolved mons that aren't early game bugs, are extremely offputting and unfair and have made me completely drop the hack in the past.
Later in the game Johto and Hoenn mons show up completely out of nowhere all over the place in trainer teams and the like. They could've been there since the start or added slowly as the player progressed but you just dumped them into late game and called it a day pretty much.
Also Gym Leaders / important trainers having random level spikes happens throughout the entire game and is incredibly annoying and inconsistent.
Backtracking in this hack is bad. You literally do not give the player the TM for Fly until the Elite 4, which makes no sense. The only reason I can see for why you did this is so people can't skip the events you've placed, but if that's a problem you just need to work on where you're actually putting them. This leads to several obtuse and random events like... Brendan opening a path for you somehow because you beat Surge? This also leads to weird and wonky changes to the map layouts that either make no sense in hindsight or just feel like an excuse to force the player to use more HMs.
Also HM order in this hack isn't very good. You get some of the best HMS (Strength, Surf and a buffed Rock Smash which is good early game) really early on, and then you get terrible HMs (and waterfall which is good) later. Same can be said about some of the TM's as well.
Several events in this hack make no sense due to changes , or are just random and convoluted. Rebattling the fake gym leaders in the ruins because the rockets kidnapped you made very little sense to me, the new dialogue is often either kind of long winded or not that great, and of course there's also unaltered text like with the grunts in Cerulean and Mt. Moon + the trainers on the S.S. Anne. I didn't expect you to give them new dialogue but it sticks out like a sore thumb because some of it just doesn't make sense in the context of what's currently happening. Also, stuff like Giovanni being "sporting" after he literally freaks out in Cerulean Cave. Again, suspension of disbelief is broken by just playing the hack because of changes to the story. Also the hack sometimes forces you to go out of your way to do what feels like random meaningless tasks (like fighting Deoxys and getting the gems for whatever his name is, yes I felt like none of that mattered and the ruins segment that happened right after that felt like a waste of time too.)
I feel like the starters are unbalanced as well. Grimer is just not a good choice to pick, and Rhyhorn is really bad at the start of the game where there are a lot of water types. Slowpoke doesn't evolve until level 40 apparently (I went with Rhyhorn) which doesn't sound like a very good time, especially when early game loads you up with water types which makes it easy to ditch slowpoke. (You can even catch wild Slowpoke and Rhyhorn pretty early too which makes them kind of pointless!)
The map changes weren't great. Most of the bigger changes like the land bridge to Cinnabar look bad and are extremely simple, and most of the smaller changes are just constant roadblocks that force the player to go exactly where the game wants them to go (I know FR/LG's openness in the mid-game is sometimes seen as a negative, but this hack literally gives you NO choice on what you do and when you do it), like cut trees, rock smash rocks. There are also some small random annoyances that just don't make sense, like one of the bridges below Lavender being removed... in an area you can't get to without surf in the first place.
Item prices are completely wack. Pretty much every single item sold in shops has an increased price tag which makes getting decent items extremely costly or impossible. Not to mention really good items like Full Restores NEVER show up until you're practically at the E4. (I didn't check the shop items between Giovanni and the E4 but I assume they didn't get any better because they were meh for a majority of the hack.)
You're not allowed to get Eevee until you have cut. Just... why? The eeveelutions aren't even that powerful. I don't know why this of all things stuck with me but it made me pretty mad.
The only other thing I want to bring up is the E4 itself which was... ok I guess. E4 felt really random, like why is Lance here in this reversed hack but all the other ones have been replaced? Sure I guess two of them were... slightly story relevant. One of them shows up like twice, and the other guy only in part of the story towards the very end, and then the other E4 member is just there because reasons. The Champion is of course Blue, which yeah makes sense, but the story just continues on as normal after the Champion fight starts and that was a really weird disconnect because I felt like at least something relevant to the rest of the hack would be brought up but... no I guess not.
Overall, I didn't have a good time with this hack, especially towards the end where it started to feel really monotonous and I was just waiting for it to be over. Normally I don't like to go into full on rants like this because it ends up with me being a bit of a jerk and I regret it later, but that's how bad of a time I ended up having.
In the end, I feel like the hack would've benefited heavily from more natural map changes and less changes to the original story of FR/LG. Sure you have to change the story (otherwise some things wouldn't make sense) but I think keeping it simple would've been the better choice.
Ok quick thing I want to add before I post, which is things I actually liked about the hack:
The actual hack premise is cool, I like it a lot.
I felt like the mon variety was nice, if really REALLY wonky sometimes (things like wild Nidoqueen in the safari zone and the ability to easily get mons like Scyther very early).
Physical / Special split and some later gen mechanics being added in were cool.
Actually including the birds in the story was nice to see.
Early Sevii island was kind of cool, you don't get to see them often because they are postgame and the postgame is not much to write home about in FR/LG. ( I love Gen 3 and FR/LG are my favorite pokemon games but FR/LG's postgame isn't that good.)
That's the end of my rant, I really don't expect anyone to actually read the entire thing because this was mostly me typing off the top of my head and because this is an older hack that probably isn't getting as much traction these days. This is really just a cathartic way for me to get all of the thoughts about the hack that I had out there. I apologize for anything that was rude or came off as rude.
IF YOU WANT TO PLAY THIS HACK BLIND, DON'T READ THIS BECAUSE IT CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS..
The level scaling and mon variety of trainers in this hack (especially in early game) is very unbalanced. Trainers constantly have level increases that outdo your mons constantly if you are not using the exp all. If you DO use the Exp All then you overlevel the trainers. This is only SORT of remedied by the time you get to late game where trainers start to more consistently have similar level pokemon but then there are random jumps like the dragon rocket trainer before Giovanni in Cerulean Cave. Stuff like Giovanni having a level 50 Articuno, the level 30 Hypno in Berry Forest (easy to deal with though), and trainers in early game having fully evolved pokemon when you will have 0 evolved mons that aren't early game bugs, are extremely offputting and unfair and have made me completely drop the hack in the past.
Later in the game Johto and Hoenn mons show up completely out of nowhere all over the place in trainer teams and the like. They could've been there since the start or added slowly as the player progressed but you just dumped them into late game and called it a day pretty much.
Also Gym Leaders / important trainers having random level spikes happens throughout the entire game and is incredibly annoying and inconsistent.
Backtracking in this hack is bad. You literally do not give the player the TM for Fly until the Elite 4, which makes no sense. The only reason I can see for why you did this is so people can't skip the events you've placed, but if that's a problem you just need to work on where you're actually putting them. This leads to several obtuse and random events like... Brendan opening a path for you somehow because you beat Surge? This also leads to weird and wonky changes to the map layouts that either make no sense in hindsight or just feel like an excuse to force the player to use more HMs.
Also HM order in this hack isn't very good. You get some of the best HMS (Strength, Surf and a buffed Rock Smash which is good early game) really early on, and then you get terrible HMs (and waterfall which is good) later. Same can be said about some of the TM's as well.
Several events in this hack make no sense due to changes , or are just random and convoluted. Rebattling the fake gym leaders in the ruins because the rockets kidnapped you made very little sense to me, the new dialogue is often either kind of long winded or not that great, and of course there's also unaltered text like with the grunts in Cerulean and Mt. Moon + the trainers on the S.S. Anne. I didn't expect you to give them new dialogue but it sticks out like a sore thumb because some of it just doesn't make sense in the context of what's currently happening. Also, stuff like Giovanni being "sporting" after he literally freaks out in Cerulean Cave. Again, suspension of disbelief is broken by just playing the hack because of changes to the story. Also the hack sometimes forces you to go out of your way to do what feels like random meaningless tasks (like fighting Deoxys and getting the gems for whatever his name is, yes I felt like none of that mattered and the ruins segment that happened right after that felt like a waste of time too.)
I feel like the starters are unbalanced as well. Grimer is just not a good choice to pick, and Rhyhorn is really bad at the start of the game where there are a lot of water types. Slowpoke doesn't evolve until level 40 apparently (I went with Rhyhorn) which doesn't sound like a very good time, especially when early game loads you up with water types which makes it easy to ditch slowpoke. (You can even catch wild Slowpoke and Rhyhorn pretty early too which makes them kind of pointless!)
The map changes weren't great. Most of the bigger changes like the land bridge to Cinnabar look bad and are extremely simple, and most of the smaller changes are just constant roadblocks that force the player to go exactly where the game wants them to go (I know FR/LG's openness in the mid-game is sometimes seen as a negative, but this hack literally gives you NO choice on what you do and when you do it), like cut trees, rock smash rocks. There are also some small random annoyances that just don't make sense, like one of the bridges below Lavender being removed... in an area you can't get to without surf in the first place.
Item prices are completely wack. Pretty much every single item sold in shops has an increased price tag which makes getting decent items extremely costly or impossible. Not to mention really good items like Full Restores NEVER show up until you're practically at the E4. (I didn't check the shop items between Giovanni and the E4 but I assume they didn't get any better because they were meh for a majority of the hack.)
You're not allowed to get Eevee until you have cut. Just... why? The eeveelutions aren't even that powerful. I don't know why this of all things stuck with me but it made me pretty mad.
The only other thing I want to bring up is the E4 itself which was... ok I guess. E4 felt really random, like why is Lance here in this reversed hack but all the other ones have been replaced? Sure I guess two of them were... slightly story relevant. One of them shows up like twice, and the other guy only in part of the story towards the very end, and then the other E4 member is just there because reasons. The Champion is of course Blue, which yeah makes sense, but the story just continues on as normal after the Champion fight starts and that was a really weird disconnect because I felt like at least something relevant to the rest of the hack would be brought up but... no I guess not.
Overall, I didn't have a good time with this hack, especially towards the end where it started to feel really monotonous and I was just waiting for it to be over. Normally I don't like to go into full on rants like this because it ends up with me being a bit of a jerk and I regret it later, but that's how bad of a time I ended up having.
In the end, I feel like the hack would've benefited heavily from more natural map changes and less changes to the original story of FR/LG. Sure you have to change the story (otherwise some things wouldn't make sense) but I think keeping it simple would've been the better choice.
Ok quick thing I want to add before I post, which is things I actually liked about the hack:
The actual hack premise is cool, I like it a lot.
I felt like the mon variety was nice, if really REALLY wonky sometimes (things like wild Nidoqueen in the safari zone and the ability to easily get mons like Scyther very early).
Physical / Special split and some later gen mechanics being added in were cool.
Actually including the birds in the story was nice to see.
Early Sevii island was kind of cool, you don't get to see them often because they are postgame and the postgame is not much to write home about in FR/LG. ( I love Gen 3 and FR/LG are my favorite pokemon games but FR/LG's postgame isn't that good.)
That's the end of my rant, I really don't expect anyone to actually read the entire thing because this was mostly me typing off the top of my head and because this is an older hack that probably isn't getting as much traction these days. This is really just a cathartic way for me to get all of the thoughts about the hack that I had out there. I apologize for anything that was rude or came off as rude.
Last edited:
- 219
- Posts
- 7
- Years
- Age 32
- Seen Jan 16, 2024
The worst part of this hack is the atrocious AI. Bunch of moron trainers in this game. I swear, trainer's Pokemon have the same trash AI that wild Pokemon do. Only Gym Leaders' Pokemon are worth a damn. I legit think somebody ought to fix that.