Video Game / Pokemon Blue Kaizo

Yes, that is a Mewtwo on the screen.

Pokémon Blue Kaizo is a ridiculously difficult ROM hack of Pokémon Blue which, as the title implies, was inspired by the like of Platform Hell hacks such as Kaizo Mario World. Everything about the game, including the wild Pokémon, the teams of trainers and gym leaders, and even the layouts, has been changed to make the game a much more difficult experience. It is authored by Sinister Hooded Figure, who released a sequel, Pokemon Crystal Kaizo, in 2014.

The game can be found here.

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Tropes used in Pokémon Blue Kaizo:

• 100% Completion: Every Pokémon available in Generation I can be caught in one way or another.
• Ability Required to Proceed: While in the original game HMs were only truly required to progress through the game in a few instances, here every HM but Flash becomes much more prevalent in their usage. Cut trees are all over the place blocking you from reaching mandatory areas, you'll need Surf to access more than just Cinnabar and Victory Road, and even Fly went from being a pure convenience to a requirement to access a couple areas: You can't get to the Fuchsia City gym (and its Pokémon Center) until you get Fly. You also need Fly to access the Pokémon Mansion, as it's blocked off the normal way, and the path leading to the Pokémon Mansion requires Fly to go the Pokémon Center.
• Action Bomb: Pokémon that know Selfdestruct and Explosion are far more common in this hack than they were in the original Gen 1 games. Additionally the Super Nerd trainer class specializes in using just Pokémon with these moves, and due to A.I. Roulette making no consideration for distinguishing these moves from more conventional moves, they will absolutely explode on you all the time.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • In the original RBY, Aerodactyl was an infamously bad Junk Rare despite its amazing Speed, with having a bad Special stat and frail durability while possessing a physical movepool that consisted of just Normal moves and crappy Flying moves that prevented it from doing much with its high Attack. Here, you still can't get it until you reach Cinnabar, but it got seriously buffed to being one of the best Pokemon in the game and is now worth the trouble of getting, with its natural learnset getting the great coverage combination of Earthquake and STAB Rock Slide, while it additionally got the aforementioned seriously improved Razor Wind that works well with its speed, and on the flying side Fly is now a decent move nearly on par with Drill Peck, while at the end it can be taught the terrifyingly powerful Sky Attack that doesn't require a charge up turn. Its coverage of moves will allow it to hit anything in the game very hard, while its speed is also far more valuable here, as with stat experience disabled having a Pokemon that can solidly outspeed and KO big and fast threats like Alakazam and Gengar is invaluable as they're otherwise a threat to possibly sweep your team each time if unchecked, and it'll be one your best shots against the Mewtwo you're going to have to fight in the Gym Leader Giovanni and Champion Blue battles, as it's one of the few Pokemon that can outspeed it and Aerodactyl will be the only such one that can exploit its much weaker physical defense to hit it hard.
  • Brock in the original game was a joke even if you picked Charmander as your starter. He is now a serious boss regardless of your starter choice who will probably beat players their first time through.
  • Lt. Surge was another infamously easy Gym Leader in the original games, known for the puzzle to get to him taking a lot more time than it took to actually beat him. Here he'll be the first trainer you fight with a full team of all fully evolved Pokemon and if you go in thinking you can just throw out any Ground type to sweep him you'll be in for a rude awakening, as half his team has the coverage to destroy Ground types, including now having his infamous Surfing Raichu from Pokemon Stadium.
  • Koga's team in Red/Blue consisted of just weak Poison types with mostly weak Poison moves and Tackle for his moveset, and he was infamous for often just self-destructing with his last Weezing, people could take him on seriously underleveled and beat him with only maybe losing a Pokemon from the Weezing's Selfdestruct. Here he swapped out his two Koffing and Muk for a versatile Nidoking that knows Lovely Kiss to put you to sleep, a Gengar with Psychic and the ability to put you to sleep as well as Explosion, and a terrifying Tentacruel that can hit you hard with Surf and Blizzard or keep you from ever getting a move in with Wrap if you don't outspeed it. The Venomoth and Weezing also got much better moves, and he added a Psychic type in Mr. Mime for good measure.
  • Blaine was another of those infamously bad Gym Leaders in the original; despite his status as the second to last Gym Leader, he could be mindlessly swept with any moderately levelled Water or Rock type. Here, he has a full team at very high levels, which consist of a Charizard with Earthquake and the always critical Slash, a Rapidash with Hypnosis and Horn Drill to sweep your team with some bad luck if you don't have a Pokemon to outspeed it, the game breaking Chansey that will be an absolute bitch to kill, and the other half of his team has the 1-turn Solarbeam to murder your Water, Ground, and Rock types. Blaine also has a Moltres too now, which with Fire Blast, Solarbeam, and the now 1-turn Sky Attack, will put a severe dent in everything.
  • Giovanni was an Anti-Climax Boss in each of his battles in the original Red and Blue despite the games and all other Pokemon media building him up as this scary and imposing Big Bad, with his Ground types suffering badly from Poor, Predictable Rock and awful movesets (including in his Gym Leader battle only having one Pokemon that actually knew a damaging Ground move despite being the final Gym Leader). Blue Kaizo's creator made sure that Giovanni befitted his in-universe reputation, as besides his team being substantially higher levelled than the other trainers around him, he has significantly improved and more diverse teams that added several Game-Breaker Pokemon, including a Persian with Hypnosis in all his battles, a Tauros in all his battles, a Zapdos in his second and Gym Leader battle, and a Mewtwo in his Gym Leader battle.
• A.I. Roulette: Still present, but SHF took care to specifically tailor Pokémon's learnsets to not only maximize their threat but to also make sure the AI picks useless moves far less often than it would in the original with its random move selection. For example stat-reducing moves are nearly entirely eliminated from all movesets except for with unevolved Pokémon very early in the game, so the AI doesn't waste turns needlessly lowering your stats, and even late game trainer Pokémon can have less than four moves to eliminate the chance of them picking suboptimal moves (for example Blaine's Moltres only has three moves with Fire Blast, Sky Attack, and Solarbeam, but since these three moves are all extremely powerful and cover everything, giving it a fourth inferior move would just introduce the chance of it picking a worse move).
• Anti-Frustration Features: While this hack aims for a drastically more difficult experience, several changes were made to ease more frustrating and other inconvenience aspects of the game.
  • All 151 Pokémon are obtainable in the game, there are no version exclusives, and no choices that locks you out from obtaining other certain Pokémon like the starters.
  • Trade evolution Pokémon now evolve through levelling up.
  • Poke Balls, Great Balls, and Ultra Balls all cost a tenth of the price they did in the original, so you can buy a ton at whatever point in the game to ease catching the much more available Pokémon.
  • Your starter choice won't matter for the difficulty of Brock and Misty at the beginning of the game, as there's a much greater variety of obtainable Pokémon in the early areas, and you can find all the starters as wild Pokémon west of Viridian City too, so those that like Charizard won't need to worry about having a tougher Brock fight and those that don't want to use any of the starters have more than enough options to create a decent team before Brock and especially Misty without depending on a starter.
  • To counteract the insane encounter rate many areas have in this hack, Repels cost a tenth of what they did in the original and are available to buy as soon as reaching Pewter City.
  • Lemonade, the most cost-efficient healing item that players will want to stock up most on, can now be bought from the Saffron City mart, so now you can buy them in bulk and don't have to spend so much time buying them one at a time from the Celadon Mall vending machines.
  • Ethers are now buyable in several marts, unlike in the original where none of the PP-restoring items could be bought anywhere and were very limited in the amount you could find. This helps alleviate PP concerns in the many required long trainer gauntlets and the overall much longer areas.
  • Several more TMs are buyable throughout the game, so there's more good TMs you can use more than once without glitches or cheating.
  • You can find each of the evolutionary stones in Mt. Moon, so now you can obtain all stone evolution Pokémon as soon as Mt. Moon, instead of having to wait until you reach Celadon to evolve those that didn't use a Moon Stone. There's additionally more found soon after in case you want to use more than one Pokémon that uses the same stone type to evolve. Moon Stones are also now buyable from the Celadon Mall, unlike the original where they weren't buyable anywhere and so you only had a very limited number of Moon Stones you could get.
  • The Pay Day TM no longer requires Surf to get, so once you reach Lavender Town you can go down to Route 12 and get it, giving you a way to grind out money sooner than the original without using a Meowth/Persian. And considering how much more you'll be relying on healing items in this hack, you're going to really want a way to get an unlimited source of money.
  • Rare Candies and Nuggets are much more plentiful throughout the game, helping with grinding and money issues. You can additionally get as much Rare Candies as you want for just one yen each upon reaching the Indigo Plateau, so you don't need to grind up any Pokémon to level 100 that you may want to use at that point.
• Balance Buff: Natural learnsets were improved some across the board, but in particular several Pokémon that were held back in the original by moveset issues or just plain outclassed by other Pokémon of their type were given a couple more moves in their natural learnset to have some caveat to merit use over others of their type (for example Ponyta now learns Hypnosis so its only niche among Fire types isn't trying to cheese with being a speedy Fire Spin and OHKO user), or in a few cases some moves were even improved to make certain Pokémon more viable (for example in the original Vileplume is completely outclassed by Victreebel and Venusaur, as it had worse stats, a worse movepool, and its signature move Petal Dance was a lot worse than Razor Leaf, so here Petal Dance is now a Life Drain move much stronger than Mega Drain, giving it a real caveat to using it). Pokémon also tend to learn their better moves much sooner, which particularly helps those who couldn't get good STAB moves until late into the game if at all (such as Fire types who only had the weak Ember until they finally learned Flamethrower in their 30s to 50s, now getting Flamethrower or Fire Punch in their mid teens).
  • Besides the aforementioned Petal Dance, a few of the other moves improved include:
    • Razor Wind, which now doesn't require a charge up turn, is significantly more powerful, and has a chance to flinch opponents. Its power points was reduced to 5, however, to compensate for how much better it got.
    • Fly, which now doesn't require the fly up turn and has 100% accuracy.
    • All other moves that had a charge up turn, such as Solarbeam, Sky Attack, and Skull Bash, no longer require charging while still maintaining their power and accuracy.
  • Pokémon that evolved disproportionately late for how strong their evolution was evolve sooner here. For example a big reason why the Pidgeot line really sucks in the original is because it took nearly as long to get a Pidgeotto as it did to get the much better Fearow (level 18 vs. 20) and then to get Pidgeot it took as long as it did to get your starters' final evolution (level 36) despite being still worse than Fearow and much worse than most other fully-evolved Pokémon, so now Pidgey evolves at much more appropriate levels (now to Pidgeotto at level 9 and to Pidgeot at level 20) to give more proportionate reward for using it.
• Bonus Dungeon:
  • Cerulean Cave consists of Blue Kaizo's biggest threats, including Alakazam, Dragonite, Gengar, and Aerodactyl, all at level 100, along with every legendary Pokémon available at the time.
  • The Abandoned Power Plant remains this, being a completely optional dungeon to explore and fulfilling the same role as in the original, except with a drastically amped up encounter rate, and Zapdos being replaced with a Ditto.
  • Saffron's Fighting Dojo fulfills the same role as before as being an optional "unofficial gym" the player can take on to get some good EXP and one of Hitmonchan or Hitmonlee upon clearing it (though since they're found in the wild well before this, the gift of them is a lot less meaningful). The one difference here is Bruno is now the Dojo master.
  • Averted with the Seafoam Islands, which in the original games was an optional dungeon to go through to reach Cinnabar as players could just go Surf south from Pallet Town instead, but it's a mandatory dungeon here as the sea path connecting to Pallet Town has been completely sealed off.
• Boss Bonanza: In a lesser example of this trope, you often have to face 2 or 3 trainers in a row without breaks to heal in between. Played straight with the Elite Four and Champion, as in Red and Blue.
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • The last Gambler you encounter (near Saffron) has a full team of six Pokémon, each of which has an OHKO move.
  • The Four Rocket Brothers, among a couple Rockets in Silph Co., have full teams of threatening Pokémon. How threatening? They are far more deadly than the previous five gym leader teams and previous rival battles.
• Broken Bridge:
  • Along with Red and Blue's roadblocks, the game places further roadblocks on you to force you on a more linear path:
    • If you try to go to Cycling Road by going west of Celadon City to get Fly immediately after arriving, your path is blocked off by water. Instead, you have to go west of Fuchsia City to get there, forcing you to go up Cycling Road (slower than going down) to get Fly.
    • You can't go to Silph Co. until you've gotten Surf and beaten Koga, due to a bit of water being added by the building.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • The Elite Four and Champion have level 115 Pokémon. With the 12.5% bonus you get to all your non-HP stats from your Badges it's not as bad as it looks, as otherwise your Pokémon would have a significant statistical advantage at equivalent levels, but overall you'll still be a slight statistical disadvantage without your Pokémon having near-perfect IVs.
  • All of the enemies in the game have unlimited power points, which was present in the original RBY games, but is more severe here when opponents have widespread access to good moves with low PP unlike the originals, and when otherwise PP stalling could have been a legit strategy to beating some tough opponents here. This is most glaring with the OHKO moves; when you get them they'll only have a single power point, but AI opponents will be able to still spam them infinitely and wipe out your whole team with them if you're unlucky.
  • Also like the originals, the AI makes its action after you makes yours. Usually not a big deal because of Gen 1's A.I. Roulette, but if the opponent has the good AI flag to prioritize super effective moves and you switch to a Pokémon with a weakness to one of their moves, they'll pick the super effective move every time. Another example of this being a problem is your Pokémon moving before theirs and statusing them, for them to immediately respond with using a Full Heal so you don't even get a free turn from them using an item.
  • Several Game-Breaker Pokémon, such as the better Psychic types, Tauros, and Jolteon among others, are intentionally only obtainable very late into the game or in the postgame, unlike the originals where many could be obtained rather early or no later than around the halfway point, while opponents throughout the game will still have them. In a particularly cruel example of this, if you trek through the Power Plant with its ridiculous encounter rate and dangerous wild Pokémon to get Zapdos, you'll find Zapdos has been replaced with just a Ditto, as well as you'll find happened to the other birds too.
  • The infamous trapping moves (Wrap, Bind, Fire Spin, and Clamp) can not be learned by the player's Pokémon besides from the very weak Ekans and its evolution Arbok, and unless you use the Arbok line you won't get access to them until very late into the game when other wild Pokémon start having them in their movesets, but plenty of trainers' Pokémon will still have these moves, and will very much abuse them if your Pokémon are slower than theirs.
  • Stat-boosting moves are similarly unable to be obtained by the player until very late, with even the Swords Dance TM being removed from Silph Co and the Double Team TM being removed from the Safari Zone and as a prize from the Game Corner. You also cannot obtain the X items to boost your Pokémon's stats mid-battle. However, you'll still find plenty of opponents throughout the game using these moves.
  • Full Heals can never be obtained by the player, forcing you to devote several inventory slots to the individual status-healing items, but various trainers in the game will use Full Heals on their Pokémon immediately after you inflict them with a status, and have a nigh-infinite supply of them to essentially prevent you from using status moves at all (most frustratingly all members of the Elite Four do this). Full Restores also can never be bought, and of the few you can still find in the overworld, you won't be able to use in battle either while opponents can use them.
• Crutch Character:
  • Nidoking and Nidoqueen, the famous Disc-One Nuke of the original games, become this here. You can still obtain them as soon as the first screen of Mt. Moon, and they even been improved with Nidoran learning Dig naturally so they'll immediately have STAB unlike in the original and they'll learn Earthquake naturally through levelling too, so you won't need to wait to get the TM for it to get them their strongest STAB move. However, unlike the original, you can get plenty of other Pokémon fully evolved by Mt. Moon pretty easily and you'll be fighting evolved Pokémon regularly after Mt. Moon, so they no longer have the big advantage of being mostly the only fully-evolved Pokémon around for much of the game. Additionally when all of your opponents are so much higher-levelled, have such better moves, have larger and much better teams, and you no longer can get any EVs on your Pokémon, a Jack of All Stats like the Nidos becomes a lot less effective and you're not going to be able to sweep through entire teams here just clicking a super-effective move, so more specialized Pokémon that fulfill particular roles and can counter specific threats become more valuable here than a Pokémon that can hit everything super-effectively off of mediocre Special and not much above-average Attack. Also opponents with Psychic, Ground, and Ice moves are a ton more common now, unlike in the original where only a few Psychic types had Psychic moves, Ground moves were very uncommon and even most Ground-types you fought didn't have them, and Ice moves wouldn't be encountered in mandatory battles at all until the Elite Four with Lorelei and Champion Blue if his starter was Blastoise, so the Nidos will have their weaknesses exploited much more often in Blue Kaizo.
  • You can get Pidgeot much faster in Blue Kaizo, as Pidgey evolves into Pidgeotto at just level 9, and then into Pidgeot at level 20, while Pidgeot additionally learns the aformentioned massively buffed Razor Wind soon after and gets STAB from it as it's a Normal move. So for a while you can just click Razor Wind with Pidgeot and deal huge damage to anything that isn't a Rock or Ghost type. Pidgeot though still has very mediocre stats and a poor movepool outsides Normal/Flying moves that will have it fall off as you progress through the game and start regularly fighting evolved Pokémon better than it, and other Flying types with better stats will end up exceeding its sheer attack power with Razor Wind, whether it be through learning STAB Razor Wind themselves (Fearow in the 40s or when you get the TM for it), through learning STAB Hyper Beam (in the case of Dodrio), or at the end when you get the also now 1 turn Sky Attack TM (in the case of Aerodactyl).
  • Butterfree and Beedrill were this in the original, but considering how quickly opponents ramp up here and how their movepools were barely touched, and what a greater variety of Pokémon you have access to early on, they'll be obsoleted here as soon as you fight Brock. Butterfree just gets the the stronger Psybeam instead of Confusion, barely an improvement that doesn't help it remain viable after Brock, and Beedrill just learns Twineedle faster, which as an effectively 50 power move when other Pokémon are getting moves up to twice as strong as that not long after, isn't making Beedrill any more viable.
• Early Game Hell: You do have a good variety of Pokémon available in the early areas, and you'll get evolved Pokémon and good moves much more quickly, unlike the original game where you had a very limited selection of mostly crappy Pokémon available early on. However, you'll need to stock up on healing items much more than you did in the original game, as you won't be able to easily one-shot sweep wild and especially trainer Pokémon and will be getting hit much harder, while money is still very limited early on. Additionally you'll quickly outgrow the basic Potion after Brock and you'll desperately need Revives, but Super Potions and Revives won't be available until you reach Vermillion City. Money issues will be alleviated when you reach Lavender Town, where you can then go get Pay Day from the adjacent Route 12, and when you reach Celadon, where you can then stock up on the more effective and much more cost-efficient Lemonade for healing inbetween battles. The game will still give you very tough battles and grueling gauntlets from the halfway point forward, but you won't be struggling so much for resources.
• Elite Mooks: The Cooltrainers take this to unbelievable levels in Victory Road, and aren't slouches in the gyms, having the best nonlegendaries and AI in the game. Also, some Team Rocket members can be surprisingly brutal.
• Fake Ultimate Mook:
  • One Bug Catcher on Route 6 (between the Underground Path and Vermillion) uses a level 100 Weedle, at a point where your Pokémon will probably only be in their mid to high 20s. However, it's still just a Weedle, whose only attacking move is the very weak Poison Sting while your Pokémon will be evolved, and Weedle still has a nearly non-existent Special, so he still won't be hitting you that hard and strong Special attacks will take it out pretty easily.
  • There's a Bug Catcher on Route 9 (between Cerulean and the way to Rock Tunnel) whose team has a level 100 Kakuna and Metapod. But their only attacking moves are Poison Sting and Tackle respectively, while their stats are barely better than Weedle's and Caterpie's with still nearly non-existent Special and even lower Attack, and this time your Pokémons' levels should be in the high 30s or 40s and fully-evolved, so they'll be even easier to take out than the aformentioned Weedle.
  • When surfing on the water routes between Fuschia and Cinnabar, you can encounter wild Magikarp that are level 100. But then it's just Magikarp with only the pitiful Bubble and Tackle for attacking moves, while you have fully-evolved Pokémon in their 70s or at least 60s at this point, so the Magikarp poses absolutely no threat. However because of Magikarp's actually decent Speed, it can be hard to run away from, making it rather annoying if you're trying to preserve your PP for actual threats or just don't want to spend time fighting a Magikarp for a low amount of EXP.
• Forced Level-Grinding: You're all but required to grind on wild Pokémon at various points if you want to beat the game. Fortunately, once you reach the Indigo Plateau, you can buy Rare Candies at the low price of 0 Pokedollars, allowing you to get your Pokémon up to level 100 quickly.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Magikarp is still this as always, though this time Magikarp starts with Bubble so it has some way to attack right away and make actual use of its type advantages. However, in turn, it takes a bit longer to evolve, now evolving at level 25, so you'll have to put in more work than getting Magikarp to just level 20 if you want a Gyarados.
  • Rhyhorn is this in Blue Kaizo. Unlike in the original where you had to wait until the Safari Zone to get Rhyhorn, you can now get it here as soon as Mt. Moon. And Rhyhorn has some good stats for a first stage Pokémon, however the only move it starts with now is Double Edge, which is a very strong 100 power move with 100% accuracy, but which is Normal type and deals recoil damage to the user, while Rhyhorn won't learn any other moves naturally until it gets Rock Slide in its early 30s. So for a long time without any TMs Rhyhorn won't be able to take advantage of type advantages and recoil from Double Edge will mean it can only battle a few Pokemon at a time before requiring healing, making using the Dig TM you get in Cerulean on Rhyhorn essentially mandatory if you want to use it. Additionally its atrocious Special and Speed is much more exploitable here than in the original due to trainer Pokemon and wild Pokemon having significantly more varied movesets, so Rhyhorn will often get shellacked hard even in battles where it should have the type advantage. Then Rhyhorn's late evolution to Rhydon at level 42 was kept when most other Pokemon evolve sooner in this hack and when you'll be regularly fighting evolved Pokemon long before your Pokemon's levels reaches the 40s. Rhydon, however, is a physically unmatched behemoth that hard counters several Pokemon and can hit everyone very hard with its STAB Earthquake and Rock Slide off its 130 Attack stat, so for the best Ground and Rock type in the game it can be worth the effort in the long run.
• The Maze: Many areas become this. Even Route 7, the shortest route in Red and Blue, becomes a small maze.
• Nerf:
  • The stat experience/EV system was disabled, removing a significant advantage the player's Pokemon had over the opposing Pokemon (which would never have any throughout the game). How big of a loss is this? A Pokemon who maxed out the stat EXP in each stat would get an additional 64 points for each stat by level 100. And the stat-boosting vitamins were removed too, while if you find any leftover ones the hack creator missed or just cheat them into the game, Oak will prevent you from using them. This makes getting Pokemon with good DVs especially important, as besides the Badge boosts (which will get counteracted in the end anyway by the Elite Four having Pokemon over level 100), getting good DVs will be the only way to get a statistical advantage over the opposing Pokemon.
  • The game prevents you from using Revives in battle, though thankfully they will still work as intended out of battle, as you're very much going to need them.
  • Dig's power was reduced from 100 to somewhere in the 60-80 range, making it no longer on par with Earthquake and not the Disc-One Nuke it was in the original.
  • Jolteon can no longer learn Double Kick nor Pin Missile, removing its ability to damage Rock/Ground types it couldn't touch with Electric moves and hit the Grass types hard (with all but Tangela being 4X weak to Pin Missile) that would resist its Electric moves. Jolteon's main draw is its incredible Speed and impressive Special, but with this it lost the coverage advantage it had over other non-Zapdos Electrics, while Electabuzz and Raichu gained good coverage moves in Ice Punch and Surf respectively, giving them a real reason to be used over Jolteon.
  • The Victreebel line can no longer learn Wrap under any circumstances (unlike with other Pokemon that learned trap moves, who if they didn't learn them anymore by level up could still get them by already knowing them in the wild in their evolved forms), and can no longer learn Swords Dance with its TM being unobtainable, removing a big advantage it had over other Grass types. It is still a viable choice as a very capable mixed-attacker with Razor Leaf and naturally learning Body Slam, while also being one of the few Pokemon you can get that learns a Sleep-inducing move early, but it's no longer the clear winner of the non-Exeggutor Grass types.
• Nintendo Hard: It wouldn't be a Kaizo game if it wasn't this.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Team Rocket gets much stronger and more threatening Pokémon.
• Olympus Mons: Right from the start your rival gets a Mew as his starter. Later in the game, when you face Giovanni for the last time, he has a Zapdos and Mewtwo.
• One-Hit Kill: Gamblers specialize in Pokemon that uses OHKO moves. And unlike future games, they can hit Pokemon higher level than they are if they are faster. Keep an eye out for Pokemon with horns (Rapidash, Seaking, Dewgong), pincers (Pinsir and Kingler with Guillotine), and Fissure users (Dugtrio and Arbok, with Dugtrio being naturally fast, and Arbok having Glare and Wrap). Basically the same strategy as in Pokemon Stadium.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Speed was already an over-important stat in the Gen 1 games, but due to the plethora of opponents that use Sleep-inducing moves, trapping moves, and OHKO moves, having a high Speed stat is absolutely vital for a Pokemon to survive or else they'll often just get destroyed by these moves. Additionally as stat experience is disabled, a Pokemon's base Speed stat becomes even more important, as you won't just be able to grind speed EVs on your slower Pokemon to outspeed opposing Pokemon that are normally faster like you could in the original RBY. Plus if you're not out-speeding the much more dangerous wild Pokemon, that's a lot more healing you're going to have to do as even if you OHKO them that's one extra hit you're going to have risk taking each encounter and running away from battles becomes unreliable if you're slower. Some slow and exceptionally powerful Pokemon like Rhydon can still find use in their ability to hard counter certain threats and to kill paralyzed threats, but if at least half your team aren't fast Pokemon by midgame you're going to be depending on favorable RNG rolls a lot to win, which will inevitable turn against you at some point.
• Point of No Return: In a rather sadistic way to make progressing through routes actually dangerous, you'll sometimes be forced to jump down a ledge to access a route, where then the ledge prevents you from going back to heal up at a Pokemon Center and the only path is going through a long gauntlet of unavoidable trainer battles and wild Pokemon, so the only way back is to go through the entire route and beat all the trainers or get wiped out and lose half your money in the process. Until you get Fly you can avert this by having a Pokemon on your team with Teleport, which when used in the overworld will bring you back to the last Pokemon Center you visited, but considering the move does absolutely nothing in trainer battles and you need all the moveslots you can get, you probably won't be wanting Teleport among any of your Pokemon's movesets.
• Retcon: In Red and Blue, Professor Oak had a Dummied Out battle which was possibly intended as an Optional Boss. Here, he replaces Bruno (who becomes the master of the Fighting Dojo) as the second member of the Elite Four. The in-universe explanation is that Bruno just retired and Oak was asked by the Elite Four to substitute for him, the development reason was because since Bruno specialized in the very weak Fighting-type and heavily exploitable Rock-type, him having a team that met the difficulty standards of Blue Kaizo for this point of the game while still remaining remotely inline with his theme was just not possible, so instead of turning Bruno into a trainer he wasn't, he was replaced with Oak whom SHF could then take reasonable liberties with.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: With the Stat EXP system being disabled, your Pokemon will be a lot frailer, especially if your Pokemon don't have good DVs in their defensive stats. Factor in how much more frequent crits are in Gen 1 and all the powerful moves being thrown around, and your Pokemon will struggle to take more than two, maybe three, hits from equivalently-levelled opponents without being resistant to their moves and/or having an extreme statistical mismatch at play. However your opponents' Pokemon never have any Stat EXP either and you get access to good moves early too, so you'll be taking the opponents' Pokemon down just as quickly.
• Spiteful A.I.: Trainers as part of their A.I. Roulette have no sense of Selfdestruct/Explosion costing them their Pokemon or even the battle, so they'll have their Pokemon explode at pretty much whenever, even if it's their last Pokemon. This was present in the original, most infamously with Koga's tendency to have his last Weezing Selfdestruct, but because exploding Pokemon are so much more common you'll be faced with this constantly throughout the game, even as early as Mt. Moon you'll be fighting trainers with teams of "boomers" (what the Pokemon community calls exploding Pokemon). This makes it nigh-mandatory to have a high defense Rock type to soak up the explosions or even better a Ghost type that is outright immune to take on boomers, or else you'll end up wasting ton of precious healing items and revives over the course of the game (or if you're nuzlocking, you will lose Pokemon to boomers if you don't have a Rock or Ghost type to fight them with).
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Beedrill, surprisingly enough, is actually one of the best options in the battle with Erika. Due to Poison's weakness in Gen I to Bug, it's able to hit two thirds of her team for 4X damage, has a 4X resistance to her Grass attacks, and is capable of outspeeding most of her mons, enabling it to get around Victreebel and Tangela's Wrap. The only members of her team it can't easily defeat are her Clefable and Eggxecutor, the latter of whom can still be easily beaten provided it's able to strike first.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Brock is a perfect example to show that the game is not going to pull any punches, as you're not going to be able to just effortlessly sweep his team with a single Squirtle or Bulbasaur that knows Bubble or Vine Whip. First his whole team is way way better, having Golem, Omanyte, Kabuto, and Aerodactyl, with Omanyte and Kabuto not being weak to Water and Aerodactyl not being weak to Grass. Then Golem has Explosion to essentially kill any Pokemon you have at this point if you don't take it out in one hit before it acts, and if it doesn't explode it can just hit you really hard with Earthquake and Rock Slide. Then while Omanyte and Kabuto may be 4X weak to Grass, they both have Blizzard to severely damage or one shot any Grass types you brought and STAB Waterfall for your Ground types too, while Kabuto additionally has the always critical Slash to deal high damage to any Water type you brought out to try tanking it. Then Aerodactyl just has Fly, but Fly is improved here to be a 100% accurate move that no longer requires the fly up turn, and Aerodactyl is going to be essentially impossible to outspeed at this point of the game, while there are no Rock types you can obtain before Brock to tank his Aerodactyl and the only Electric type available is the very fragile Pikachu that will still get hit hard by Fly even with resistance. The game is gracious enough though to give you a much greater variety of obtainable Pokemon before Brock, including all the starters and other various Grass, Water, and Ground types, so you better take advantage of it instead of trying to solo his team with your starter like everyone almost always did in the original game.
• We Sell Everything: The Indigo Plateau Poké Mart sells Rare Candies and Master Balls.

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