I think the comparison to Odyssey is interesting since I feel like what I ran into with Odyssey might be related to what you described about PLA. Odyssey has a lot of good content and looks nice, but I can't consider it a top Mario platformer because there isn't actually a lot of platforming as Mario. I compare it to something like 3D World that, despite having less personality than Odyssey, I'm more likely to pick up when I'm thinking "I want to play a Mario game" because it is closer to what my mental image of "a Mario game" is.
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Unpopular opinions
- Thread starter antemortem
- Start date
Dusting off a post from a month ago…
Several fangames, including ones made by teams and not a single person, also suffered that problem, likely taking advantage of the Pokémon Essentials’ preset materials and add-ons. If National Dex formats teaches us anything, it would be the fact that the power level spiral out of control, and require some serious balancing effort to not make the most powerful Pokémon too awful to face against without being forced to go for cheesing strategies.
And it sure doesn’t give fangames their own identity. More power for those who like those kind of games, though.
Adding to the part I bolded…
Several fangames, including ones made by teams and not a single person, also suffered that problem, likely taking advantage of the Pokémon Essentials’ preset materials and add-ons. If National Dex formats teaches us anything, it would be the fact that the power level spiral out of control, and require some serious balancing effort to not make the most powerful Pokémon too awful to face against without being forced to go for cheesing strategies.
And it sure doesn’t give fangames their own identity. More power for those who like those kind of games, though.
About fangame trends I saw:
As time passes, I'm less and less a fan of the idea of giving Gyms to all eighteen Types for some reason. I can't tell you why, but the best explanation I have is that 18 Gyms is a bit much.
It doesn't help there are regularly retired and replacement Gym Leaders, and because games like Reborn tend to feature a boatload of characters who are at least somewhat fleshed out, they add to the number of characters to keep track of.
Next, the stories. Brand new games generally have much darker narratives than the official games, sometimes waaaaaaaaay darker, but that's not my point, many other people pointed this out.
The issue I have with fangame stories, other than some weird edginess, is how complicated they can be. Episodic games in general have this trait, and without a story log to keep track of previous scenes, the player can be lost in the hours of (unskippable) cutscenes. You know, the thing people love to shit on SMUSUM.
Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: the rom's documentation (i.e., balance changes, added moves/items/Abilities/Pokémon/whatever) can be difficult to find.
In other words, Fame Checker good. It just felt rewarding to read random bookshelves in Pokémon Centers all over FRLG.
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Most romhacks suck.
Self-inserts, pet mons getting buffed to the moon, obnoxiously optimized mons forcing you to EV train in-game, moronic level curves, dumb edgy stories, "All pokémon" dexes, poor documentation of changes (I admit I mess up on this one too), "balance" changes...
A lot of them are the definition of overcorrecting.
Self-inserts, pet mons getting buffed to the moon, obnoxiously optimized mons forcing you to EV train in-game, moronic level curves, dumb edgy stories, "All pokémon" dexes, poor documentation of changes (I admit I mess up on this one too), "balance" changes...
A lot of them are the definition of overcorrecting.
There's a theory in fanfic circles, "The fandom creates what the original media lacked". So Fanfic!Sonic gets weird porn, Les Mis gets low-stakes coffee shop AUs with no deaths, Marvel movies get lots of characterization and the heroes spending time together, etc.
Pokemon romhacks seem to follow the same theory. The originals have lots of mons you can't obtain in a normal playthrough, never adjust balance, squeaky-clean storylines that ignore the horrific implications, and are incredibly easy. So those are the things that motivate someone to dedicate hundreds or thousands of hours to "improving". Add every mon, rebalance the useless ones, actually play out the implications of a Hyper Beam being used on a person, make the bosses a serious challenge. If they were happy with the original games, they wouldn't be doing it.
Thing is, making a game is a LOT of work, so someone doing all of that on their own is either going to take shortcuts or finish in 2062. So yes, there's issues. I'm curious, what aspect of the original games are you wanting to see fixed by romhacks that they aren't touching?
Pokemon romhacks seem to follow the same theory. The originals have lots of mons you can't obtain in a normal playthrough, never adjust balance, squeaky-clean storylines that ignore the horrific implications, and are incredibly easy. So those are the things that motivate someone to dedicate hundreds or thousands of hours to "improving". Add every mon, rebalance the useless ones, actually play out the implications of a Hyper Beam being used on a person, make the bosses a serious challenge. If they were happy with the original games, they wouldn't be doing it.
Thing is, making a game is a LOT of work, so someone doing all of that on their own is either going to take shortcuts or finish in 2062. So yes, there's issues. I'm curious, what aspect of the original games are you wanting to see fixed by romhacks that they aren't touching?
It doesn't help you can't really mimic a professional player's intelligence with anything but the most advanced AI.
Also, joke battles like the Fisheman with six Magikarp are fine as they are meant to be: brief jokes between two normal battles.
Exactly! I want to add that many family-friendly cartoons have edgy and bloody fanfics about them.
Having a human traveling companion or two with their own teams, so you can have Double/Triple Battles together.
I'd like to see friendships between Trainers as a game mechanic.
Also, complex tutorials. I get it, the average romhack player tend to be an experienced Pokémon player, but let's say your game has dozens of new field effects. Wouldn't it be nice to teach these to newcomers?
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Personally, I would go for the route of actually showing the player the ropes, doing the best to ensure they can see every bit of gameplay information without ever having to open an internet browser.
Let me be honest these are far beyond any normal romhack can do.
Reminds me of an idea based on an incomplete fanfiction of mine, where the three main characters went through the events of Black and White but separately. A game with three selectable protagonists, where each of them takes part in different events in the story.
And in battles between them you'd face your own team from your playthrough with that other character.
A common idea when I'm idly daydreaming about making my own mod is a fully-featured Battle Frontier with modern mons/moves/abilities/etc.. Just drop the story and exploration entirely and have a battling sandbox with a bunch wildly different formats that reward interesting use of the entire series' options. Doesn't even need genius AI, if I wanted my gimmick teams to be crushed by optimal setups I'd just play OMs on showdown (well, aside from the general lack of natdex OMs to play in).
I think the formula used for Ash's goal in Journeys has a lot of potential to be used as a game - travelling through portions of regions trying to climb up through a ranking.
If this is still about Reborn then I honestly think it strikes the right balance by making the full notes for each new field a collectible, because it encourages exploration while also not overwhelming the player with too much info all at once. For Gyms, you get a bit of advice that's more specifically tailored to how the Leader makes use of the field without needing a wall of text that gives a full rundown of everything the field does (which you can consult at your own leisure through the field index once you've collected the notes anyway).
I think people tend to bounce off fangames pretty quickly if they're tedious in the beginning, so it makes sense not to frontload too much info, even if that would suit the hypothetical newcomer who's eager (and able) to absorb all of it. It sucks if you lose a battle because of some out-of-nowhere mechanic you had zero knowledge of, but that's always a risk in any Pokemon game.
That wouldn't be *hard* to do in Emerald itself.
It's just... do you know how many Frontier mons are in that game?
The ones I talk about all the time tbh. Just a little extra spice and adjustments to lower the barrier between in-game trash and slightly competitive mons.
By those I mean earlier Nature Mints and all that. Nothing crazy. Just the kind of stuff people already do in PkHex to save time anyway.
Another slightly more complex thing I'd like to do would be changing one of the Battle Tents to a Battle Dome version of the World Tournament with Leaders and Champions.
That would probably require me learning the decomp though and the whole thing would be kinda messy.
I kinda miss Stadium's Gym Leader Castle...
Real talk, having 6 Pokemon eligible for in-game battle was a mistake. Either you have a team of 6 battle-ready mons and few things are more challenging than your average wild encounter (unless you give all the trainers degenerate strats that can potentially wipe you), or every trainer is a slog that costs a ton of resources or many tedious trips to the Pokemon Center to recover from.
A speedrun timer.
If you have a strategy guide and a rabbit's foot, you can beat any turn-based game. Speedrunning Pokemon can be a lot more interesting since you absolutely cannot grind or drag your team to a Pokemon Center if you want competitive times. The randomness can be a pain but a lot of speedruns use starters or early mons to mitigate a lot of it. Maybe also have an in-game reward for reaching certain times?
Talk about a "realistic" change that's boring as sin to play. I'm not opposed to some slight EV tweaks to add some spice and mitigate your own EV gain, but stopping everything to grind just to have a chance, especially before the E4 where some fangames love to spring this on you, is the worst.
And if you want to max out EVs, you ought to make getting and resetting EVs real easy so no one's shaving years off their life. Please make the Vitamins cheaper!
Gen I was a strong start for the series' stories: you had an immediate goal that put your pride at stake, then when you get to know the world better, you're eased into stopping the mafia from treating your animal friends badly for profit. Along the way your rival will make life worse for you so you remember to kick his butt whenever possible, culminating in a battle that will decide who your surrogate father loves and who gets shafted. It's far from a deep narrative and being forced to win against your rival diffuses the tension by a lot, but later games get so wrapped up in abstract apocalyptic stakes and annoying characters that the OG games' story is still my favorite.
Fixed*
But real talk, the conception of "fixing" things and ignoring that 90% of "fixes" rely so much on preexisting examples is horribly missed. And then we enter elitist mob mindsets of "we can do better than X game dev"
It's just toxic over the years, and I can attest that as a Sonic fan
*Also come on. Sonichu is both Sonic and Pikachu. And Pokemon has way more porn
I like the select 3 out of 6 only format. Comp may benefit from this as well. Gym leaders also used off "coverage" mons to further incentivize the player to swap rentals too!
I feel it kinda makes the battles too short, it depends on the format for me tbh.
This is extremely underrated.
It's a lot easier to work on something when you have a foundation to build on.
Now I understand why people make fangames instead of fully original IPs.
And why there are fangames based on other fangames.
Fangames that are just based on original IPs and are otherwise original works are one thing, but fangames that are just heavily modified versions of an existing game are another. Pokémon fangames are largely the latter, and to some degree that limits what can be done with them. I'll admit that I haven't really delved extensively into Pokémon fangames though. The only instance I'm aware of for making an original game that still plays largely identically to a Pokémon game is from the makers of the Touhoumon hack, that would go on to make another Pokemon-style Touhou fangame that is wholly original and not just a mod, featuring a lot of mechanics unique to the concept while still playing fundamentally identical to the actual games, with minor adjustments here and there (such as adjusting the damage formula to remove level from the equation and reduce random variance from 85-115% to 85-100%). Making an original game with the same core gameplay as opposed to just a mod allows for a lot more creative freedom with the solid gameplay formula the series has potential for but only barely scratches, for the most part. But you basically never actually see anyone pull it off, never mind competently.
You guys had fangames/ROM hack discourse without me?
Anyway, I have two things to say.
Screw this ugly-ass Hisuian Typhlosion back sprite from Radical Red.
Inclement Emerald is my go-to example of a good rom hack that increases difficulty, adds new content, and making playthroughs a blast with Magic Guard Delphox, Huge Power regular Mawile, early Adaptability Skrelp, and Pseudo-legendary Vikavolt.
Going through my two boxes worth of used Pokemon made me want to post some highlights.
Anyway, I have two things to say.Screw this ugly-ass Hisuian Typhlosion back sprite from Radical Red.
Inclement Emerald is my go-to example of a good rom hack that increases difficulty, adds new content, and making playthroughs a blast with Magic Guard Delphox, Huge Power regular Mawile, early Adaptability Skrelp, and Pseudo-legendary Vikavolt.
Going through my two boxes worth of used Pokemon made me want to post some highlights.
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The only chance Pokemon Ranger has at a revival is as a mobile game. I don't say this for arbitrary doomer reasons, but because phones & tablets are the only modern gaming platform where Ranger makes sense.
I’m just keeping my DS and Ranger games forever.
People who double-post low-effort single-sentence opinions suck