Pokémon General Thread

So, what are some good Pokémon fan games?

Pokémon Quartz, if by "good" you mean So Bad, It's Good.

Pokemon Blue Kaizo and Pokemon Crystal Kaizo are both good.

Pokemon Reborn is edgy as fuck but it's a solid game.

Pokemon Glazed is the best ROM hack I ever played, and is honestly better than most pokemon games, AND it has a fuckton of content, to boot. Although one of the gyms is awfula nd I hate it

Pokemon Zeta/Omicron is a pretty ambitious game that overall pays off pretty well, with a decent balance of challenge VS fun, and while it does have a darker tone than most Pokemon games, it's still an overall optimistic story.

I heard Insurgence is even better, but it's Even Sadder and I don't know if it's completed.

Pokemon Uranium is one of the few fangames with actually good Fakemon, and they balance the fakemon with a healthy amount of existing pokemon. It's definitely a challenge though, and as I mentioned before the final boss has an annoying amount of fake difficulty, but other than that it's a very solid game.

Lastly, Pokemon Flora Sky has a real shoddy translation, but the actual content is pretty good, up to standards for sure.

Pokemon Outlaw and Pokemon CAWPS are also both good, but incredibly edgy.

Light Platinum isn't too bad

I just realized that since greninja and keckleon both have protean, one could run a team with a representative from each type.

Which ones are Drayano's? I only remember that he wrote some gen IV walkthroughs on Gamefaqs that I relied on heavily, so at least he knows what he's about.

Black Black and Volt White are his Gen 5 hacks.

The new Pokemon generations episodes are out. One of them's a spooky halloween episode.

Drayano also did Storm Silver and Sacred Gold, and there was a Fire Red romhack he did which I THINK was called Fire Red Omega.

His hacks have actually been very influential because of how well thought-out and how well-made they are, a lot of people stated they base their hacks off his approach.

Visit the Pokemon Generations thread in the Manga and Anime section to talk about it.

edited 28th Oct '16 10:00:24 AM by AmethystLeslie

Seconding Glazed as just all around really solid - it's well written, has good game design, a good selection of Pokemon, a lot of quality of life changes from newer generations, etc.

Reborn is a bit try hard in the dark department but of all the really ambitious Pokemon fan games I'd say it's the best - it has even more content than Glazed (some of which is really, REALLY out of the way,) really strong theming in its setting, backgrounds, and original sprite work, a decent (if not a bit overwrought) story, and the challenge is through the roof if you're into that sort of thing. We'll never have an official Pokemon game like it, so I can appreciate that it exists and I really enjoy all the unique things it tries to do.

I've only played bits of Zeta and its snowclones and while they're also really ambitious they don't have that level of polish Reborn has in any facet - the backgrounds are mostly taken from the main games, the new content is pretty goofy and unbalanced, and they try to do so much with new features that it's even buggier than most of those RPG Maker Pokemon games.

If you want a really different fangame, Pokemon Type-Wild is a straight up 2D fighting game with some obvious choices like Lucario, Gardevoir and Blaziken, but some more off-the-wall choices like Breloom, Snorlax, and even Swalot.

Of those mentioned games, how many really shake up the status quo of the games and do something different?

Reborn, Uranium, Insurgence. Glazed is more of the typical Pokemon experience but introduced in such a refreshing way that I really don't care.

Pokemon CAWPS has a storyline that eliminates the Pokemon Badge hunt.

What exactly is so great about Glazed?

Reborn adds a bunch of different special terrains for gym battles and plot relevant areas that will weaken or strengthen, add dual type damage, alter the bonuses of status moves, deal constant type damage or trigger certain abilities like Flash Fire or Water Absorb. It also adds some convenience by making Hidden Abilities readily available, (you can use ability capsules to switch to them, and they are really easy to get) lets you change natures, and goes a bit into giving gym leaders competitive movesets and items at times. Or at least optimized ones.

A not really innovative but really nice thing it adds is at the beginning of the game when you get to chose your starter you can pick from every single gen's starters.

edited 28th Oct '16 1:10:11 PM by doineedaname

Having seen an entire playthrough of Pokémon Uranium by Tie Tuesday on his Hitbox, I can say with confidence that it is not a good fangame.

Brief breakdown of problems(SPOILERS WILL BE INDICATED WITH ):

-comically edgy

-the random encounter rate is way too high

-npc trainers do not give enough money

-lack of variety in npc teams

-damage scaling is all over the place

-The Fly HM is not acquired until near the end, and the map is huge, making transit a chore.

-There are a couple of moments in which you will fight powerful fakemons that are impossible to catch(trying to due so will result in the fakemon immediately breaking out of the ball with a message along the lines of "For some reason, the pokemon could not be caught!"). The first time ends up being justified(it turns out to be already owned)there is zero reason for the second.

-Some random dialogs reach critical mass levels of cringe.(for example, a female trainer in one of the gyms says something like "Ima guuuuuurl gamer! I'm a gurl who playz video games o3o")

- One late-game segment is a looooong water route with no Pokémon Centers or rest stops, and has multiple unavoidable encounters with surfing ninjas(yes) that are invisible until you pass by them.

- The Pokemon League is formatted like a tournament, like the anime. While an interesting idea on paper, in practice it amounts to battling 4 trainers you have fought before instead of a unique Elite 4. Also, there is no proper champion battle.

I'm sure I can list more, but I don't want to get too repetitive and/or petty. I will give the game credit for creating the name "Daikatuna" though.

edited 28th Oct '16 3:46:06 PM by EternalPride

... Wait a minute, why can't we have a Dark-type Gym if Giovanni can be a Gym Leader?

I just felt that the creators got lazy at some points. It was a game in itself to see how many Pokemon cries they stole, which song was a remix of what (includes remixes from various Pokemon games and Mother 3), and where some songs are outright taken from, unremixed. Sometimes trainer dialouge is reused.

Also, i read the page for Uranium, and apparently there's a couple pokemon in the game used by random trainers you can never obtain. That, I find to be the dumbest thing in this game, if not one of them.

edited 28th Oct '16 4:07:00 PM by AmethystLeslie

I like Uranium. Admittedly, I'm not too far past the second badge in my playthrough, but it's been a very enjoyable experience overall. It has some good spritework, I love the original music tracks (although the presence of remixes and anime music bother me a little), the whole nuclear radiation thing is actually pretty original for a fangame, and the fakemon aren't too shabby for the most part. Except Titanice, Titanice is just bad. I'm not joking, there's actually a fakemon based off the famous RMS Titanic. And it has the ability Forewarn. Even considering that and all its other flaws (and the fact that it's slow as hell on my computer), though, I think it's not bad for a fangame.

Speaking of Pokemon Uranium, I'm surprised it doesn't have its own thread. I've been thinking of starting one, but I've never actually started a thread before.

A problem with many, many Pokemon fangames.

I think the main issue is that most of the creators are rather young and don't understand how to present dark things tastefully. When you're younger it's easy to confuse BLEEDING EDGE with dark and insightful writing.

And well these ARE fangames, I don't exactly expect professional writing quality from them in the first place.

Also a lot of the earlier ones still had the super saccharine FRLG/RSE music even though the game was supposed to be dark and moody, which was a pretty huge source of Narm, in addition to bad custom spritework and other presentation issues. Reborn is like the biggest exception to this thanks to having original music that actually fits the game.

I haven't really gotten the chance to check out Pokemon Uranium. It looks like a good enough game, but I'm such a paranoid girl when it comes to shared files. A lot of people I've seen seemed to be complaining about the designs of the Fakemon, but I actually liked quite a bit of them, especially Paraboom and Actan.

I've played a few Pokemon RO Ms but the only ones I liked were Snakewood and both Dark Rising. Yeah, I'm not particularly big on Pokemon fan games, but I appreciate the good ones out there.