#difficulty romhack

[bright-hope-spot-19]

I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this here, but here goes nothing. It's something silly, I just needed to vent a little.

So, I was playing this new romhack called 'Pokemon Pisces' that recently came out. It's a remake of pokemon emerald, with better graphics, quality of life improvements, and, of course, over 200 fakemon. All that is good and dandy, but the problem is as follows: this game is stupid hard. It literally requires you to have competitive level knowledge and not at all friendly to casual players.

First of all, the fakemon. I'm not gonna criticize their designs. They're pretty good and creative in that regard. It's just that, being fakemon, when you're faced with them, you have no idea what types they are. What are their strengths and weaknesses and their strongest stats. I played only till the 3rd gym and other than the 6 in my party, I don't know what any other of these mon's types are. Sure, sometimes you can tell from their designs and names what they are cause it's obvious. Other times, tho, you'll just be stuck clicking random moves, hoping to see what's effective cause you've no idea what you're even going up against. I tried searching the internet for some documentation about the fakemon, but I couldn't find anything.

Related to this is also the fact you have no way to tell at what levels your fakemon evolve or if they even evolve by level up at all. I know for sure not all of them evolve with levels. What if one of them evolves with a stone or with friendship? Or other crazy requirement I'm not aware of? An arrow pointing upwards will appear next to your mon once they're ready to evolve, and you can see and do that from your pokemon team menu. But I think that only works for level up evolutions. There's also the fact I don't know what every mon is supposed to specialize in. Like, if they're supposed to play a tank role, be a physical attacker or a special attacker. What if I get a fakemon with a nature that raises attack but it's actually supposed to be a sp. Attacker? How am I supposed to tell? I chose the water starter, and I'm still not sure what stat this thing specializes in, lol.

Talking of competitive, here's where we get into the big problems: you're expected to ev train ofc, but some evs are ridiculously hard to find. Sp. Attack evs more specifically. I couldn't find anything that gave sp. Attack evs in the early game, so most of my mon ended up with higher physical attack stats. All gym battles are double battles, so you better be prepared for that, too. Well, with the exception of the 2nd one cause it's Liza fighting without Tate. The gym puzzles are also ridiculously and needlessly complicated (more than they have any right to be), which honestly kills some of the fun in the experience. The game also has an enforced lvl cap. Now, you must be thinking there's nothing bad bout that, but you'd be wrong. The game doesn't just stop you from further leveling up and gaining exp when you're at the next gym leaders cap. It actively forces you to be 2-3 levels below them. If their ace caps at 20, your mon will stop gaining exp at levels 17-18. It's literally putting you at a clear disadvantage under some bs pretense that 'your mon wanna try to win with their own strength or whatever." So, you're forced to go into a double battle against fakemon, you know nothing bout and underleveled to top it all off. Oh! Also forgot to mention the minuscule detail that once you enter a gym, you're literally not allowed to exit again for healing unless your entire party has been knocked out. So, you better buy tons of healing items, and if you don't have enough money to afford them, then you're outta luck cause even the gym npcs will kick your ass. Fully expect even the gym trainers to be higher level than you. Not to mention the huge plethora of new moves, abilities, statuses, and effects that have been introduced, that you'll ofc know nothing bout upon encountering them. Cause, as I've said: I couldn't find any documentation about the fakemon in these game and their abilities.

This game seriously needs an easy mode that's more friendly to casual players. Provide the player with a list of the new fakemon and everything regarding them, or add that as a feature in the dex. Make gyms single battles, decrease the difficulty of the puzzles, make it so you can leave the gym to go heal, allow over-leveling (or at least make the level cap be at exactly the gym leader's ace, not under). Also, give the fakemon better and improved lvl up movesets, cause as they are, the moves they learn kinda suck, for how hard this game is.

I can't recommend this game. If you're a competitive player who'll probably think it's easy cause you've already beaten Radical Red in hard mode, then by all means and purposes: go for it! If you're just a casual player with near to 0 competitive know-how, I'm sorry, but Pisces is not the game for the likes of us, imo. The effort put into is greatly appreciated. But the ridiculous difficulty, especially in puzzles you have to solve in some routes to advance, is not. I'm dropping this game and looking for smth more according to my capabilities, lol.

[parapsychologicalvulpes]

gonna figure out how to add more roms to my wife's hacked 3ds bc I crave

the pokemons

[waterloggedsoliloquy]

current Emerald Legacy team lineup! i forgot how much linoone is a BEAST

[imunbreakabledude]

ripppppp i had a really good nuzlocke attempt of inclement emerald just wipe on victory road :/ it was only my 4th attempt tho, first one to get past watson but made it thru most of the game without issue. it FELT like i had a ton of deaths but also this game gives you sooo many encounters that i didn't feel too restricted by them. but i let this wipe just be a standard wipe instead of running it back with the many pokemon left in my box because I know i'm at a tipping point where i could probably limp through victory road but would definitely wipe at the E4.

next time i get back here i'm gonna look up docs for victory road trainers because they're basically like bosses with megas... (I had been using docs for the boss battles, but they don't have em for the non 'boss' trainers, unlike radical red... radical red definitely spoiled me with great QOL ANDDD really detailed and nicely laid out docs... but I saw some player-compiled docs for all trainers which I'll use if/when i get back here... : ' ) )

[peppapigvevo]

I've been playing this since last week and I'm obsessed

a new romhack called Pokémon Emerald Seaglass dropped like a week ago, it’s an enhancement/difficulty adjustment hack that updates the battle engine to the physical/special split as well as a bunch of other fun things. but it also does a huge visual overhaul to the game and i am frankly obsessed w the graphics???

it’s like…… this perfect blend of game boy color and game boy advanced. just the right amount of nostalgic. the palettes are limited but stay so pleasing to the eye. i am Enamored w it.

[deltaruminations]

SPOILERS for both chapters (mainline story beats only). just some. HOT REACTIONS FRESH OFF THE PRESSES

i cannot fucking believe this madman was originally going to release all of this AND chapter 5. that shit would have killed me. i think pretty much everyone underestimated how quickly the story would escalate. fucking insane

nothing in the world could have prepared me for chapter 3. the team really just let their freaks out on this one. utterly deranged and constantly disorienting to play blind. i truly do not have words to describe the cocktail of emotions i felt seeing tenna on-screen for the first time. in hindsight it's funny as fuck that toby let his design be shown in the press kit because that little console border art was not even close to being a meaningful spoiler for the real deal. if anything the expectation of a Normal Guy just made it hit harder LMAO. i might be in love with tenna

i like that everyone in advance was like "tenna is going to be so horrible he's going to be awful" and it's like no he's about as sympathetic as queen, just more unhinged

tenna gaster parallel Bigtime i think,,,,,, i mean gaster might actually be a terrible bastard but the romhacking type stuff in particular is like. yeah

the use of the game-in-game controller gimmicks was really cute and a great vehicle for character exploration. i liked that a lot. honestly i was kind of dreading chapter 3 because i'm pretty dogshit at minigames but i thought it was handled well. i will say as of chapter 4 i'm maybe a little concerned about the difficulty level going forward as someone with pretty terrible twitch reflexes/hand-eye coordination but we'll see

raise up your bat "true" lyrics......... god dess fucks

i can't even begin to parse the bunker or kris's cellphone calls or the mayor. i guess i'm tentatively on board with the idea that the three symbols are people contacted by/working with the knight hence why they have their own codes. the thing about sacrificing undyne(???) is fucking nuts what does that even mean

dessroom note from playing (verbatim) (context is mint tin of weird looking leaves in the drawer): DESS HOLIDAY WEED SMONKER!!!!!!!!

roaring knight fucking crazy i don't think it needs to be said LOL. dessknight REAL and so much better than we could have imagined. i was wrong about dessknight. dessknight kicks ass. the design is insane and she's so smug and sassy with it too lmao i love this bitch

i'm ALMOST tempted to guess that the RK isn't simply dessknight but rather some kind of horrible almagamation of dess's AND gaster's fractured mind-parts or whatever (skeletal design, gun's, stigmata) but i'll hold off on that for now

church dark world just overwhelming as fuck in general i don't. know what to even say about it. the second i went to move on a horizontal climb and that fucking column 3D ROTATED i started pogging

i'm guessing the Bad Prophecy Ending involves killing noelle or some shit fuck it maybe noelle angel real after all

one immediate crack theory about the Church Prophecy (i'm sure i'm not the only one who raised an eyebrow about this) is that some combination of the "three heroes" is not actually who DELTARUNE is positioning them as being, or at least it wasn't MEANT to be them -- ex. "susie's" role could be filled by dess. "cage with a human soul and human parts" is so vague it could obviously also refer to the vessel but if we want to get CRAZY with this it could even be like... a humanoid skeleton... SORRY i'm just saying like ribcages... i doubt this is anything i'm just. saying

i liked jackenstein as a character and thought his encounter was funny but in terms of gameplay i was pretty much like OK Fuck This Actually after enough rounds. sorry. i do think it's very funny to foreshadow & tutorialize The Fucking Titan with this poor shitpost of a guy

the titan looking like the silhouette of a huge skull before it's "revealed" is. Troubling lmao i can't even begin to parse what that would mean. i wouldn't guess that gaster is a titan but also if dess is a titan plus all those scarred & crying eyes motifs associated with the titan FUCK IT maybe. i don't know why he's appearing halfway into the game and letting us whale on him but who fucking knows what his machinations are anymore

...anyway kind of a dumb thing to give a shit about after everything else that happened but as far as i'm currently aware Baby Bones Theory lives on? extremely important note i took while playing (verbatim) (context is looking through the window during chapter 4 light world):

what i'm saying is the pattern of papyrus being notably un-papyrus-like continues. almost as if he. is not papyrus. I'M JUST S. I'M J

SKELETON HOUSE IS MESSY

IT'S MESSY

PAPYRUS IS A NEAT FREAK

AAAAAAAAAA

OH also lol soft confirmation of soriel? toby got the nerve to do it? good on him, RIP kris's home life tho lmao

[curiousitycollective]

Hey anyone who likes Pokemon, we highly recommend checking out the romhack Pokemon Odyssey its a complete fangame that changes the story into one like Etrian Odyssey or Made in Abyss where you are diving deeper into ruins of an ancient dungeon world with an absolutely gorgeous art style.

We're just past the second of eight(?) levels and are loving it. Cool features include:

Beautiful artstyle, with expressive portraits for dialogue and cutscenes

Three different difficulty levels, which can be adjusted during playthrough

Trainer battles are doubles and wild pokemon are singles, which leads to really interesting battles and team dynamics

Exp share and a level all candy that allows you to instantly level your team up to one under the cap if you don't want to grind

Pokemon stats and moves are rebalanced to give weak pokemon and lines uses. There's a lot more pokemon to choose from and despite doubles being a harder format we are having way more fun with early game 'mons then ever

New regional forms for pokemon

Access to the move relearner and name rater for free in the hub area from the start of the game

An unlockable fast travel system

And more! It genuinely an amazing game and we really recommend checking it out

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

Responding to the romhack recommendation ask from August 22nd.

Depends on what you're looking for.

Do you want a mostly vanilla gba fe experience with some interesting design decisions? Check out the princess's lament.

Want something close to vanilla in terms of gameplay difficulty but an all new story? Vision quest.

Do you want something that plays like Thracia 776 (escape maps, capturing, follow up crit modifier, held items that modify growths fatigue, I'm sure there's more unique thracia mechanics I'm forgetting)? Sun god's wrath. Bells of byelen.

Want a hack that STRONGLY rewards resource management and creative use of warp/rescue? Call of the armor.

Want a gba demake of a 3ds remake of a nes game that is about the same quality as the 3ds game in question? Sacred Echoes.

Want a hack that feels more like a dnd party getting into wacky situations than a traditional fire emblem game? Cerulean Coast.

Want a hack that takes a silly concept and follows that concept to wild conclusions? There are so many of these.

Oops all archers (a hack where all of your characters are archers). Or Myrm Emblem (where all of your characters are sword guys). In both of these hacks there are a bunch of different varieties of the base class that promote into wildly different things.

No redundancy hacks - i think all 3 gba games have one now - where all characters of the same role from vanilla are compressed to one unit. For instance in the FE7 one, all three lords are compressed into one unit who has the best of their base stats and growths (so hector's strength, lyn's speed, for instance).

Trainee emblem - a hack of sacred stones where the big change is everyone is one tier lower than they normally are, and can promote to different classes than they normally come in from the base game (for instance, seth is a cavalier and can become a great knight, franz and gilliam are both footlocked lance units that can promote into cavalier or knight). Everyone is weaker/less mobile than they are in vanilla, so it's also kind of a difficulty hack.

👀👀👀

[space-spaghetti-s-universe]

Its really funny to me that people complain about how "much harder" or more "brutal" the past games where and then point to like Flannery or Lenora or Cynthia as the peak of pokemon being "tough" even though they only struggled back then because they were kids and as a kid you didnt really pick "omptimal strategies" you were having fun with your little pokemon friends!

Or they didnt pick up the game mechanic the game was trying to teach you! Lenora is called a "run ender" or a "difficult challenge" in certain pokemon spaces when her main gimick is teaching a kid to just *not* spam attack moves lmao.

If you ever criticize the relative difficulty of pokemon games I do think there should be an electric shock that runs through your body that reaches your brain and forces it to think the phrase "pokemon is for kids and competitive is an ad" at least 25 times

[ifbench]

Does anyone have any recommendations for mainline Pokemon romhacks and/or fangames that:

- Have essential quality of life features (such as universal EXP Share and/or infinite rare candies). - Aren't grimdark or post-apocalyptic. - Don't make the difficulty ludicrously absurd.

[aspiffygoat]

Presque VU from the romhack F-Zero 55 on Master difficulty. Very long track where bumpers can easily make your run fall apart! Definitely in my top 5 most difficult custom tracks so far!

[cavewolf]

i had a weird pokemon fangame dream. bw2 romhack. you start in what looks like virbank city but i'm 99% sure was just me remembering rejuvenation's starting area. a green rain was turning everyone into plants (rose bushes specifically?). there was an option to increase regional form spawns or leave it low. i turned it onto increased spawns and all the regional pokemon spawned at a stupid high level, like lv55 in the first area of the game. there was a pokemon that started as a triple battle with a sick-looking koffing and weezing but it absorbed them both on the first turn and became a weird looking ghost type (like the tower ghost from rgby) and ohko'd my kirlia. most of the other regionals were either cool looking (there was an electric/ice looking dog but i forgot what it was) or just infected by the green rain. there was difficulty options and walk through walls cheats that i messed with. what does it all mean

[fe-romhack-propaganda]

Finished Dream of Five. I expected it to be good, and gameplay wise it certainly delivered (even if the difficulty curve could be smother). And it's just such a gorgeous game. There like a dozen portrait that would blow everyone mind if they were official.

And man, the story. It's just so good. That part in 23x destroyed me. Play it folks

I must agree with Anon, play that game. The week I played it I literally couldn't put it down.

[gascon-en-exil]

If you weren't aware, Fire Emblem E3, an exposé of up and coming FE romhack projects, is currently live. Dozens of showcase videos are being shown off on the FE Universe YouTube channel.

I'm excited to say that I've been helping out with Project Baldr, a Sacred Stones-based remake of Genealogy of the Holy War. The team reached out to me to tell me that apparently they'd been using my FE4 event gallery videos to write their game script, and since then I've been offering ideas about fleshing out certain characters and sketching out ideas for supports. One of the difficulties of this project is converting Genealogy's love growth and inheritance mechanics into a GBA-style support system. I've begun the process of writing out the supports I'm interested in, and while none of that is going to make it into the FEE3 presentation I'm really looking forward to using this opportunity to explore some of my favorite Jugdral characters and scenarios. This being me, I'm taking it as a personal challenge to make this project gayer than any official FE, even with it being a remake of the original eugenics baby game.

Anyway, Project Baldr's presentation will be this Friday, 13 October, at 18:00 EST. I'll probably post a link to the video on my channel as well after it releases. Check it out if you're interested!

[yourlocalcoffee0330]

Hi hi :D

As you can probably tell by the rebranding on my account, I’m planning to use this account as little blog to document my thoughts on the games I play. Feel free to comment on what I have to say, or suggest something else for me to play. I love talking about games almost as much as I love playing them, so let’s start a conversation!

4/6-4/12

I started my week by beginning two challenge runs in Pokemon! One is an Emerald soul link I’m doing with my girlfriend and another is a Nuzlocke of a difficulty romhack called Pokemon Volt White. I was inspired by PChal’s Run & Bun video (which you should watch!!) to play a difficulty hack, and I’m hoping it won’t be too difficult for my first one. Ironically enough I had a death in the Emerald playthrough before the Volt White one, so maybe that’s a good sign…?

I’ve also been trying to get into Monster Hunter Rise since my friend is no-lifing Wilds and has left his copy of Rise abandoned in the Steam Family. Monster Hunter always seemed like an interesting series to me, and Stories already endeared me to many of the monsters. However I’m also remembering from my last foray into the main series that it’s very slow-paced; I’m about two hours in and I’m still trudging through the tutorial. I’m sure it’ll be fun once it picks up, though!

Helldivers 2 has been one of my most played games throughout the year, and R.E.P.O. has quickly taken up second place this week. They’re both really fun games to play with friends, though my friend group has only really been receptive to playing the latter recently. That doesn’t matter much to me though; I’m having a lot of fun grinding through the new warbond on my own. For those who don’t know, it’s pretty much entirely western-themed, and I’m a huge fan of cowboys. They’ve had a revolver in the game called the Senator that’s been one of my favorite guns since I first unlocked it last April, and pretty much this entire warbond compliments it. They even added in a new laser pistol that’s basically the Senator if it fired lasers instead of bullets. It’s been fun to use, especially with my usual play style of going into lower difficulties to help newer players, and then leaving after a few missions. Really makes me feel like a wandering space cowboy.

Being away from school for the weekend also means I have time to play some retro games! I’ve mostly played Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct on my SNES. DKC kinda sucks in the sense that you can’t save until you reach a checkpoint in a certain world, and since I suck at platformers this means I’ve failed to actually make a save file during my first attempt. I do like this format though, as it’s rather unforgiving and makes the worlds feel like a gauntlet you have to endure before you’re awarded a moment to breathe. I think 2d platformers are at their best when they feel that way.

Killer Instinct has also been challenging for me (I suck at fighting games also), but I like playing as Spinal because skeletons are fucking awesome!!! It’s also been a surprisingly educational experience because of the combo breaker mechanic, which I recognize as the burst system in Guilty Gear Strive. Due to my general aversion to fighting games if I don’t have friends to play them with, I don’t know much about which games innovated on which mechanics, so it’s interesting that I got to learn a little bit about the genre.

That’s about all I have to say for this week. Finals are coming up for my classes, so things may get a bit hectic, but I’m hoping I’ll still have time to share my experiences with you all in the time I’ll have to breathe :)

[mrbensonmum]

SUPER METROID SUBVERSION

Played some Super Metroid Subversion for the last few days and it is a really good romhack for Super Metroid (Nintendo, 1994).

Technically, it is a totally new game with new level design and a lot of new and different items. And that's the problem, the path from one item to another is sometimes to much and also the "power on" / "power off" mechanic gives the game, in my opinion, a high difficulty in the meaning of the exploration aspect. Also, the boss fights are way more difficult than in vanilla. You can change difficulty in the main menu but I only played it on easy and that was good for me, very vanilla like. If you like exploration, have no problem with longer ways and like the mechanics of the vanilla game, this is for you. Despite my points, you will have a lot of fun with the new items and the rewards for the solving of the different puzzles.