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Red hack: Star Beasts - Asteroid Version

Isslohd said:
Hello @Soul Valor, I want to ask about
Spoiler:
Thanks and it's a great romhack
Click to expand...
Thanks for playing! In answer to your question...
Spoiler:
 
Hello @Soul Valor, I want to ask about the music, is the rival battle music an original composition or is it a GB rendition of an existing song like some of the other songs in this rom hack? If so, what is the song title?

Thanks for introducing me to the TCG GBC soundtrack by the way, it is a banger (love the gym leader theme).
 
Isslohd said:
Hello @Soul Valor, I want to ask about the music, is the rival battle music an original composition or is it a GB rendition of an existing song like some of the other songs in this rom hack? If so, what is the song title?

Thanks for introducing me to the TCG GBC soundtrack by the way, it is a banger (love the gym leader theme).
Click to expand...
It's a remix of Needle Man's theme from Mega Man 2 (Gameboy).
 
Hi, @Soul Valor. I am very impressed with the new star beasts in the asteroid version, but I also miss the meteor version exclusives like Vesuvio, Isslohd and Cloud riding Odiazolt. Do you have a plan to include the meteor version exclusives in the comet version?
 
noticed a bug:

Spoiler:
 
Hey @Soul Valor, I noticed that the TV in the player's house is a reference to
Spoiler:
 
I was messing around with the Mew Glitch and encountered this frankly creepy Star Beast. It seems to have a working Dex entry. Is this thing story related? I'm only 3 badges in at this point.

Spoiler: Rare Star Beast?
 
Soul Valor said:
Spoiler:
Click to expand...
Oh cool, I'll have to keep an eye out for it!

Loving the hack btw, makes me feel like a kid again not knowing what I'll find next
 
absolutely loved this hack! it was a blast discovering new star beasts, and the heartfelt moments really got to me. this is the first hack ive 100% in a long time. bravo!
 
After playing and thoroughly beating the game, I simply had to create an account to post on this thread.

Star Beasts has proven itself as the greatest generation 1 hack in my eyes. I'm willing to call it flawless, in so far as I acknowledge it suffers from all the technical issues inherent to its base game and console's limitations - the PC storage system will never not feel like pulling teeth, and being unable to access a more detailed description of moves suck.
To elaborate, I'll critize its qualities in detail:


Embracing Gen1 quirks and balancing around them rather than trying to overwrite them with the modern "Pokémon standard".

I've played video games for nearly three decades, and at a certain treshold, a shift happens: you start to value 'objective quality' less than 'being unique' or 'having a distinct identity'.
Which is absolutely not to say that a game seeking to be worth playing can afford to discard notions of 'actually being functional' or 'meeting standards of quality', of course ! That's still a core part of a good experience. But, if 'objectively sound game design' is the only quality a title has going for it, you're left with nothing more than a pretty shell.

Where I'm going with this preamble is that I'm one of the few people who judge Fire Red & Leaf Green to be worse games than their original counterparts Red & Blue.

Kanto, as a region, is only one of many intertwined aspects which created the Red & Blue overall experience - and, taken on its own merits, it's... quite frankly one of the worst of the Pokémon franchise ? Possibly the worst ?
It's not bad in a vacuum, and it even has its own moments and things going for it, but compared and constrated with every other region that came afterward it's the least interesting, and it can even feel barren at times... and that's a good thing ! It means every subsequent game has been an improvement and a refinement on the foundations laid by Red & Blue ! It would honestly be much sadder if the situation was reversed, and we held Kanto as a pinnacle of region design the team has struggled to recreate ever since !

But this begs a question: why, then, would you ever replay this first generation, this first region ? What can it possibly offer that the next thirty years of mainline games made using better technology, stronger fundamentals, and a bigger and greater scope... can't ?
Red & Blue has an answer to this question: gratuitous nineties slang, grotesque Pokémon sprites, edgy trainer classes with whips and gambling, bullshit wrap and sleep, critical rate tied to the speed stat, an unhinged type chart and the old Special stat, on top of so many other things I can't list them all ; it's a glimpse at a very peculiar time in history where Pokémon didn't know it was going to be the biggest multimedia franchise in history, and still needed to define itself, work out its quirks, and evolve into its final form. Like the base stage of a newly discovered species of Pokémon, it was a chaotic seed of potentials, and in consolidating its final identity a lot had to be shaved off: some of it was bad, and discarded for really good reasons ; some of it offered visions of what Pokémon could have become in an alternate timeline - not better, not worse, merely different.
And it's on full display for everyone to see ; in the raw, uncut gemstone that once existed, preserved still.

... Then Fire Red & Leaf Green came, and sanitized the entire thing, retroactively pigeonholing generation 1 into a cohesive piece of the very narrow "modern Pokémon standard" design space mentioned in the title. It took an HM Cut to every little part that stuck out, and replaced or added over those losses... nothing of its own: its intent never was to force Kanto into taking a bold step forward into a new direction ; it was entirely motivated by dragging it in line with the current games being produced, without bristling the (then still young yet already nostalgic) veterans of the series. It's telling that its biggest addition, the Sevii Islands, have the loosest of ties, both geographically and scenaristically, with any part of Kanto.
What that leaves you with are 'remakes' failing to capture any of the appeal Red & Blue offered its original playerbase at the time past a surface level, while simulatenously doing nothing to breath a second life of its own into an antiquated region, to give it a fighting chance against the likes of Hoenn, and especially Hoenn, already right around the corner. It's like unwrapping a mummy and slathering it in make-up: it's not valuable to historians as a mummy anymore, yet it still can't compete at fashion shows. You've squandered it !

... All of this is to say: I really, deeply appreciate that Star Beasts eschews trying to retrofit modern balancing and sensibilities into generation 1, and instead takes a good, long look at it and asks "how do we push this system further and make it more enjoyable in its own, unique way ? How do we increase options and complexity without substracting from the whole ?".

I like that the move pools have been kept lean while getting rid of the redundancy and dead options. Captures the feeling of old 'mons with none of the reasons it made them mostly terrible.
I like that Steel and Dark have been added as they were in generation 2.
I like that thoughtful alterations have been made to existing moves, and a lot of the new ones give more space to old mechanics (new hyperbeams, wraps, two turns charge), rather than c/c everything from gen 9 and calling it a day.
I like both the designs for the Starbies and the art direction used in rendering the sprites: it's clear that a TON of work went into making sure this Stardex all at once fits gen 1 aesthetic, while having its own identity and staying cohesive through 153 critters.

It's impressive, it's lovely, and I admire both the work itself and what it (successfully) aimed to accomplish.


Pushing its Stardex to its limits.

I've never seen a Pokédex squeeze so much value out of its limited ~151 slots before, and the keystone to this is Star Beasts' masterful usage of dual typing. Combined with the absence of physical/special split, it's intelligently wielded for so many purposes: balancing powerful Starbies with a dual typing they can't properly exploit for STABs due to their stats spread while inflicting them with extra weaknesses ? That's two of the Starbies on my team, and I love them even more for that, not less ! Quadruple weaknesses are plentiful. Seldom seen dual types representation, like Steel / Normal, Water / Fire, Bug / Dark ?!

And the availability is just as great as the diversity on offer. I believe that every single Starbie (that's not a starter / legendary) is available to catch in the wild, and it does sooo much to spice things up and make routes feel more distinct ! The most notable glow-up has to be Lavender Tower, which went from two Pokémon species to... five ?
It also means you can build a team out of nearly every species really early on ; a boon for replay value and getting as much use as possible out of your favorites.


Great writing !

It's even greater when you consider two constraints the style had to work under: fitting the specific tone of generation 1, and accomodating the small text boxes of a game boy. You have to condense your ideas into their most striking form, and it pays off in excerpts such as the introductions to each legendary Starbies, painting a vivid picture befitting the scope of these unique events out of a few sentences.
But really, that quality permates the entire project - and while it can easily be taken for granted, or disregarded as irrelevant fluff for a small Pokémon game, that'd be an insult to an incredibly ambitious work that went the extra mile at every turn.
A shining example of this happens at the very start. The first NPC met outside of your house asks about your missing dog, and if you ever found what became of it. On its own it's already a meaningful piece of dialogue that sticks with you (informing the protagonist's past and character), and then it further pays off in a completely unexpected way right around Mount Moon ! Setting those bread crumbs for later and trusting the player's ability to catch on to them hours later, or weaving a side story through the dialogues of trainers scattered across Routes 14 through 18 and Saffron City - which, itself, will also pay off much later - giving the new rival a distinct flavor of said rivalry with the protagonist and his own character arc... none of this was needed to make a functional hackrom. It's been done out of care for the project, and I love it.

I also love the references made throughout the game ! Not only for how varied they are in their sources, but the spin put on them to make them work - taking the general idea with an execution you can call your own. When you read the Fahrenheit 451 one with the trade NPC added at the gate of Viridian Forest by talking to him again afterward, you don't just think "oh neat, a reference I understood !", it's also using the imagery from the book to tell an emotional moment all its own. I've already explained why the SMT Pascal callback is awesome, the Disco Elysium 'cameo' is hilarious - they're all so tasteful !



A new old adventure.

Speaking of putting in a lot of extra work in the smaller details for great effects: a Kanto game following all of the Kanto beats has never felt like such a fresh, new adventure !
The Stardex is the most obvious part, but then there's all of the overworld graphical assets being remade, the brand new soundtrack, plenty of old NPC rewritten with flavorful new dialogue (the lady in the school of Viridian City...) and new ones added with their own, interesting things to say !
Then there are all those mysterious nooks and crannies which weren't there before... it's a delicate balance for any developer to strike: those additions need to be 'juicy' enough to sear themselves in the player's brain as important and worthy of the space they take, yet somewhat equally spread throughout the whole region, lest that same player stops looking forward to each 'new' old Route wondering to themselves what the twist will be this time.

So it's my pleasure to announce for the rest of thread to see that yes, said balance has been, uh... striken.
... Yeah ; I'm not sure what else I can say without turning this point into a dry catalog of every addition made Route-by-Route and what they do... it's, uh, very frequent, and meaningful, and cool ; just, trust me on that one ?

The point being: I know there's a demographic of people who aren't interested in a hack unless it features its own original Region ; there's only so many times you can revisit the same game with a slightly different gimmick, no matter how varied said gimmicks are.
Star Beasts takes place in Kanto, yes, and it doesn't do anything really crazy like sending you through the region in reverse or something ; yet it has reforged so many core aspects of the original games, and added so much brand new content, that I'd recommend anyone gives it a chance regardless of your reservations - you just might be pleasantly surprised !


The closest thing to a 'flaw' this game has...

I will admit: this a personal dislike, not something 'objectively wrong' with the game, and I especially don't want to make a big deal out of it because I can't pinpoint precisely where it's coming from: I'm not sure if it's the badge boosts, or if Starbies give more Stats Experience in general (especially given what I said earlier, that the game isn't coy about putting evolved Pokémon in the wild as common encounters), or if the greater availability of Starbies meant I settled on a definitive team composition "too early" and Stats Experience got out of hand that way, but my team abruptly picked up steam towards the midgame and never slowed down ; the second half of the Gym Leaders turned into a bloodbath ; I could tank hits like there's no tomorrow and OHKO everybody in return.

I'm not calling for a massive difficulty overhaul based on my feedback alone - firstly, because there's a space for easier hacks like this one, not every hack needs to cater to my tastes specifically, and secondly, because I tend to quickly pick favorites and stick with them, so blankly buffing Trainers based on my playstyle would make things miserable for everyone else who likes to swap party members around and try new things constantly. But I wonder how doable an option at the creation of the save file or a separate patch to disable Stat Experience would be ?


Here be screenshots of my save file !!

Spoiler:


Spoiler: And one last question !


Thank you and everyone who worked on this game for making the jewel that it is, and I wish good luck in your future endeavors, whatever they may be~ !
 
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