Pokemon Primeval Black 2: A New Era of Generation 5 Hacks (Beta Phase 1!)

[NurseEita]

Synopsis: (Primeval Black 2 is currently in Beta Phase 2 (up to Plasma Frigate @ PWT, join the discord below for more information!)

Primeval Black 2 is a difficulty hack of Pokemon Black 2. Inspired by the mechanics of Pokemon Vintage White, Primeval Black 2 pits you exclusively against Sinnoh and Unova* Pokemon vs your exclusively Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn Encounters. (Note: Certain trainers have pre-evolutions found in the Sinnoh regional dex to reflect and promote diversity in the Trainer pool).

Changes:
In this ROM hack, there are a variety of changes made to create artificial difficulty, and QOL changes to maintain a steady difficulty curve, including but not limited to:

• A variety of new Typings, Evolutions, Abilities, and Move-pools for ALL 643 Pokemon (except Legendaries)
• ALL POKEMON ARE CATCHABLE (Gen 4-5 mons in Post-Game)
• PERMANENT Spring Season
• 4 New Early-Game Encounter areas: Floccesy Town, Pledge Grove, Liberty Garden, and Anville Town
• RARE CANDIES ARE AVAILABLE IN ALL MARTS FOR 10 Pokedollars, Many other mart items have reduced costs
• Reduction, Removal, and Rebalancing of many moves
• New Required Battles!
• NO ROTATION BATTLES ARE REQUIRED TO BEAT THE GAME
• New Optional Trainer Gift Items
• New Gift and Trade Pokemon
• Legendary encounters are BANNED and replaced with something special 😉 / Legendaries are locked behind beating the Champion 2x
• NEW TMs and Ways to get certain Items
• WEATHER ABILITIES ARE BANNED, and all Weather moves are 1 PP
• NO EVs available ANYWHERE, including the disabling of Vitamins, Wings, and X-Items (including in Battle!)
• Removal of naturally held Items in certain Pokemon lines
• ALL TRAINERS HAVE ITEMS, RANDOMLY GENERATED NATURES, AND MAX IVs
• Hidden Grottos are rebalanced to reflect RNG and Rewarding Patience
• ALL POKEMON HAVE MAX HAPPINESS ON CAPTURE

PB2's current Beta Phase (Phase 2) has introduced a significantly better Gen 5 AI that is similar to Emerald Kaizo's AI process. This AI is known as Champion AI (not to be confused with AI from the Pokemon Champion). This new AI will test your skills as it has proved to increase the difficulty of the game more than ever before!

Steel typing has been updated to Gen 8 Type Effectiveness (Now Neutral to Ghost/Dark typing)

Shiny rate has been increased massively (from 1/8192 -> 5/2048), roughly a 20x increase from original shiny rate.



Here's some screenshots of the Phase 1 Beta!
https://imgur.com/a/g9auHxw

Beta Testing Structure:
Primeval Black 2 will follow a specific and constant release, beginning with Phase 1. As of now, Beta testers will exclusively test the areas from the beginning of the game until Burgh. The purpose of Beta testing right now is to address what is too easy, what is too difficult, bug fixes, and other miscellaneous errors not found in Alpha testing. If you complete a run to Burgh, immediately reset and try a new starter and new encounters, I want to see how much variety there is to the difficulty curve! To be very clear: NOT EVERYTHING IS SET IN STONE IN *ANY* OF THE DOCUMENTATION, THINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE BEFORE OFFICIAL RELEASE! I encourage everyone, regardless of Pokemon knowledge or experience to attempt this Beta! The more opinions and testing, the better (at least in my eyes <3).
If you'd like to start beta testing now, visit the Drxx discord here and comment in the #primeval-black-2 channel! Discord Link: https://discord.gg/4fHpavhjVR

The patch and documentation can be found below (Including Offline .zip Documentation!), and to be very clear, I will not be supplying a base ROM for this hack. Google is your friend here.
Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1ys2hckiTK3XAR4AmBCntBDmVfl9nfSuB

Coming soon: Showdown Calculator!

Special Thanks:
Lastly, I would like to make special shoutouts to:
PlatinumMaster & Hello007 for quite literally helping me build this from the ground up, you're the real MVPs of this project.
Drayano60, Brom, RefinedPlat, Kurisu, Questionable Specimen, and AphexCubed for rebalancing advice and technical help.
Drxx and NotSuicuu for both creating a great community that welcomed my hack and inspired me to work on this project.
and lastly, All the supporters who have been anxiously waiting for this hack to release. (and you too Gian_97)

What's Next:
Phase 3 Beta will be releasing sometime in February 2022, with the emphasis on Gyms 6 - 8 (and possibly the E4/Champion). If you're interested in following this hacks progress, please follow the hack with the discord link above, or follow me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/NurseEita . Thank you, and have a nice day!

 

[NurseEita]

One last thing: Beta Phase 1 only contains the Start until Burgh content, so not all of the ROM is uploaded. This is to fine tune changes and receive feedback to further develop this hack in a timely manner.

 

[Pyxal]

<snip>

Moved your thread here, since this is the right place to post!

 

[Pokemaniac Zaheer]

Hello, can i know when Beta Phase 1 was released like date??

 

[r4ndu1n]

I have been waiting so long for a good Gen V hack with all pokes so Im looking forward to it. But why the changes with the weather moves and stuff? Why such drastic changes I mean? Will there be a version with just the new pokes and moves?

 

[NurseEita]

As a difficulty hack, I intended to limit the player's ability to influence weather immediately as weather in Gen 5 is an incredibly deadly tool to utilize. Weather abilities allow players to counter enemy teams so one-sidedly that it disturbs the intended game difficulty. This game is intended to be nuzlocked, and any ability, move, or strategy in base-game BW2 that can make the game one-sidedly easy for the player to use and the AI to not utilize equally is something I must remove from the player. To remedy this, however, I've included many other changes to increase the consistency of each nuzlocke run in the game, including additions of high-tier items in earlier segments, rematches that allow for optional, but powerful TMs in certain gym splits, and other things that have been noted in the progress notes of the game.

As for a version without the massive changes, I'm unsure if I would like to make that now, but I will keep it in mind after official release!

 

[Safr]

As a difficulty hack, I intended to limit the player's ability to influence weather immediately as weather in Gen 5 is an incredibly deadly tool to utilize. Weather abilities allow players to counter enemy teams so one-sidedly that it disturbs the intended game difficulty. This game is intended to be nuzlocked, and any ability, move, or strategy in base-game BW2 that can make the game one-sidedly easy for the player to use and the AI to not utilize equally is something I must remove from the player. To remedy this, however, I've included many other changes to increase the consistency of each nuzlocke run in the game, including additions of high-tier items in earlier segments, rematches that allow for optional, but powerful TMs in certain gym splits, and other things that have been noted in the progress notes of the game.

As for a version without the massive changes, I'm unsure if I would like to make that now, but I will keep it in mind after official release!

Is the project dead?