If it makes you feel better: the games don't recognize it as a Greninja anymore.
I transferred it into SV, so I could quickly get my shiny charm, and it just did not count towards Greninja. I don't know what it counted towards, but it was not a Greninja
There are some odd "sub-species" formes that count as their own Pokemon species. IIRC it's just Battle Bond Greninja and Own Tempo Rockruff/Lycanroc. Just weird programming related to there not normally being a 4th ability slot.
This also occurs when you try to fill a Pokedex slot with Regional Forme that the specific dex doesn’t recognize. It’s why regular Ursaluna doesn’t unlock Bloodmoon Ursaluna’s entry in the Kitakami dex and why, if you didn’t transfer one over before the DLC dropped, you had to re-catch specific Pokémon like Tauros or Wooper.
The climax of it may have been cool, but Delta Episode on the whole is lame. Zinnia is an absolute retard who treats everyone like shit and causes half the problems for retarded reasons that only make sense from a meta perspective (her belief that the meteor will get teleported to another dimension has no in-universe backing is only believable by the player if you think she means it will get transported to the RSE universe), yet the story treats her a mysterious, misunderstood ally. And don't forget the remake adds an extra bit about her being the true mastermind behind Team Magma & Aqua because she wants to start an apocalypse so Rayquaza will appear and then it can incidentally also destroy the meteor. And that was her Plan A, while simply collecting some Key Stones and giving them to Rayquaza was Plan B.
Additionally, Gen 5 introduced many changes that were pretty much made entirely for competitive autists, like eviolite, triple and rotation battles, various technical moves you will never, ever need in single player ect.
B/W prioritizes adding things to the benefit of competitive autists over having a decent postgame, are the games that receive then-unprecedented criticism, and Gamefreak backpedals so hard we got BW2. Again, you're restating my point; catering to hypercompetitive autists was a deliberate choice and came at the expense of stripping down the singleplayer experience.
That postgame sucked. All the rocket grunts were piss easy and only had ONE pokemon on their team. Only the bosses had some sort of challenge but only because they were using legendaries.
in fact that was one of my issues with Gen7. Every trainer battle only consisted of 1 or 2 pokemon. Even Gen6 did this with the gym leaders and they were underwhelming... no other new pokemon on their teams even in the Chateau Writ battles, just the same two mons just higher levels.
Gen 4 was the last generation with consistently good postgames, yes. Even the lacking Diamond/Pearl postgame wasn't that bad compared to what little you got later on.
Even then, Gen 1 didn't have a postgame outside of one dungeon, Gen 2 let you explore Kanto again but outside of gym leaders it was mostly barren due to lack of cartridge space. Emerald had a good postgame and Sevii Islands were a nice distraction in FRLG, but there really isn't anything to do in RS outside of Battle Tower. Hell, the GC titles had the best postgame that generation and those weren't even done by Gamefreak, you could argue these were the original post game episodes that would get popularized later on.
So yeah, Gen 4 having consistently good postgame was an outlier since the franchise wasn't ever really known for it, before or after Gen 4. You know, unless you really got into the competitive facilities these games had, in which case we're wrapping around that whole argument again.
B/W prioritizes adding things to the benefit of competitive autists over having a decent postgame, are the games that receive then-unprecedented criticism, and Gamefreak backpedals so hard we got BW2. Again, you're restating my point; catering to hypercompetitive autists was a deliberate choice and came at the expense of stripping down the singleplayer experience.
Their priorities in singleplayer changed for a more cinematic experience with "deeper" stories and characters(ie your "friends" and gym leaders being involved in the main story) at the cost of lower difficulty and less gameplay. Competitive has nothing to do with this drop in quality, what it shows that the people responsible for gameplay mechanics and balance were the only people at Gamefreak who still knew what they were doing. That is, until they got lazy or the company changed direction during the end of Gen 7.
That postgame sucked. All the rocket grunts were piss easy and only had ONE pokemon on their team. Only the bosses had some sort of challenge but only because they were using legendaries.
in fact that was one of my issues with Gen7. Every trainer battle only consisted of 1 or 2 pokemon. Even Gen6 did this with the gym leaders and they were underwhelming... no other new pokemon on their teams even in the Chateau Writ battles, just the same two mons just higher levels.
Like I said, RR was planned to be part of the main story but was scrapped. I guess they needed something to quickly throw into the game to make "ULTRA CHANGES" worth the 40$ so they decided to throw in the tech demo they had lying around as an easter egg. That's why the teams are so lame and so is everything else, they had nothing made other than models and boss fights for that dungeon. I guess they figured all the member berries would carry that moment, altho I do appreciate that you can set the theme of your Festival Plaza to Rainbow Rocket(along with their theme) once you defeat them.
Late to the discussion on generational designs, but I think the easiest way to see the difference in design philosophy and style over the years is to look at regional forms.
Even between pokemon that are ostensibly the same species, you can see substantial differences in things like anatomy, proportions, etc. I think a lot of these smaller things are what a lot of people mean when they say older pokemon feel more "grounded," they just often don't have the vocabulary or eye for art to quite tell that's what's going on. A lot of new pokemon don't feel "animalistic" because they're drawn like cartoon stickers, not animals.
Galarian Rapidash looks like Sweetiebell from MLP if she was halfway to princessdom. I can't unsee it.
With a lot of newer pokemon sometimes I encounter them and think "What the hell is this thing?". Even when they are cute or cool they often look off in some way. I tmakes me wonder if enough time and care is going into the design or if they just don't have the knack to do it right.
Late to the discussion on generational designs, but I think the easiest way to see the difference in design philosophy and style over the years is to look at regional forms.
Even between pokemon that are ostensibly the same species, you can see substantial differences in things like anatomy, proportions, etc. I think a lot of these smaller things are what a lot of people mean when they say older pokemon feel more "grounded," they just often don't have the vocabulary or eye for art to quite tell that's what's going on. A lot of new pokemon don't feel "animalistic" because they're drawn like cartoon stickers, not animals.
Hard disagree. Of the four original generations, three out of four had postgames that people still cite, and the one that didn't was a scuffed passion project that kickstarted the whole thing. You can correctly point out that Johto's postgame is just the same but more, but that defined Pokemon as a series for the first four gens and people still laud fitting in all of Kanto into G/S/C as an accomplishment, and still ate it up then.
R/S lacked the scale of a second region and tried to make up for it by adding more to do in Hoenn itself - there's an entire second layer to the map between the underwater and secret bases, expanded rematches and berries from novelties into actual features, and made actually decent, progressive minigames in the form of Contests and arguably the Trick House; most of these would stick around in some form and be built on into Gen 4. Emerald further polished it; the Battle Frontier is its most remembered addition - which took the Battle Tower and actually made it fun for everyone by adding a bunch of different gimmicks and rulesets that are never used in a professional setting - but it was the first game where hunting down a region's Legendary Pokemon became a big part of the post-game and rematches expanded to include Gym Leaders and major characters, both of which became major parts of Gen 4. While FRLG didn't have as varied postgames (ostensibly) on account of being faithful remakes of Gen 1, the Sevii Islands are still Johto-lite in terms of scope.
I'm not going to go off about Gen 4's postgames because we both agree they were good, and I think it's self evident that BW2's was as well. Good postgames have become outliers, saying they were always outliers when you could easily double your main story playtime in the postgame of most pre-BW games without once using the Battle Tower is absurd.
Their priorities in singleplayer changed for a more cinematic experience with "deeper" stories and characters(ie your "friends" and gym leaders being involved in the main story)
Correct; this began in earnest with BW, which by your own admission contained a large number of changes designed solely to appeal to the competitive scene.
I finished up my playthru of Fire Red Remixed romhack. I thought it was a relatively straight forward 386 romhack, but I still have a few things to talk about.
Since we may have some /vp/ refugees among us who are confused, let me elaborate: I started playing Pokemon romhacks not too long ago. I used to be a purist who only played the official titles and took pride in my 20+ year old collection I used in competitive battling online and in competitions. However, recent mainline games turned me off completely, so I decided to bite the bullet and start playing romhacks to fill the void. I am planning to play one of every mainline game from Gen 3-7, I already covered a few of those so if you're interested in reading up, here is a link to my previous one
That one has a link to the previous romhack I played before that, so on and forth. You should be able to find them all like this.
Anyways, this is my last Gen 3 Romhack, and as I mentioned in my earlier posts, I use "Trigger's PC" program as a Gen 3 PokeBank, letting me keep all my Gen 3 Pokemon from various saves in one environment where I can look at their stats, trade them around games, deposit them into the actual games ect. similarly to the actual Pokemon Bank. Recently, I covered GameCube romhacks so if I have some sort of an "illegal" moveset it likely came from one of the two GC romhack games, where you can teach different TMs, Tutor Moves or learn different moves that are impossible in the mainline games. I don't consider this cheating as I do everything in-game then transfer the save file into Trigger's PC, as I would with any other Gen 3 game, and even original XD game had unique movesets within it as well. If future romhacks will also let me learn unique moves that Pokemon can't normally learn, I will likewise consider that acceptable. This is a bonus for me, not a problem, and I say that as a "purist" with 20 year old Pokemon in my collection across various carts. If there is straight up cheating in the romhack, for example if the game gives you 999 Master Balls, I will simply find another hack to play instead while making note of it.
I usually link my team I used for the playthru via attached .txt file, but the recent site update seems to have broken the Attach File button for me completely. Instead, I will give you a catbox link
As for the romhack itself, as usual I will give both Pros and Cons shortly for an easier summary. The summary for the romhack is simple, it is a 386 hack that lets you catch all the Pokemon naturally. There is plenty of those floating around for both RSE and FRLG, however this is the one I played. What caught my eye is that Legendary Pokemon aren't static and can be encountered in the grass along with other Wild Pokemon...infinitely. That's right, Legendary Hunts now have a completely new definition as you can catch as many as you want. Granted, it is not simple, and they're very rare, however it is possible...with a caveat, I will get to that shortly. Other than Legendaries, there is also Starters found in grass and Fossil Pokemon you can catch in the Unknown Dungeon, both of which normally can't be caught in other Pokeballs, as well as a whole slew of new Safari Zone Pokemon you can't normally catch in Gen 3. You can see why my collector sense tingled, as this was an opportunity to catch some truly unique Pokemon that only the Orre games would rival.
The execution is mostly fine HOWEVER there are bugs in this romhacks I will have to point out. This is the first time I encountered any serious bugs in one of these, and two of these are an oversight I cannot ignore. You see, while it is true you should be able to catch every single Legendary Pokemon, that is simply not the case due to the author's laziness. Celebii and Ho-Oh cannot be caught normally without fixing the romhack, even tho the game states that this should be the case. For this reason, anyone who is actually interested in trying out this romhack for themselves will need to quickly patch these two in themselves via HexManiacAdvanced editor. I will show you how in a spoiler below for anyone interested:
1) Once you download the editor and the romhack, open it up. You should see a search bar. Type in "Berry", click on "Maps" and click on the cell with the Berry Forest
2) Click on the "Edit Wild Data" button at the top, click on "Show Pokemon in Grass"
3) In the text field, you will see the list of all encounters in the area. Do not delete any lines here, you cannot add or take away any encounters in this engine. You can only edit them, so go to the 1% section at the bottom and replace Jirachi with Celebi. This is a duplicate, you will find it on Two Island near the Waterfall instead.
4) Go back and click on "Edit Wild Data" again. Now click on "Show Surfing Pokemon" and do the same thing, replace Jirachi with Celebi.
5) You're not done yet, click on the "Home" button at the very top of the toolbar(highlighted in blue), type in "Water" in the searchbar and click on the Water Labyrinth map.
6) Edit Grass Data again, but pay attention to what you find: Ho-Oh is already there. He will still not appear in-game, why? Simple, it's encounter rate is set to zero. Don't ask me how that's even possible, just change it to 2, as that is the encounter rate Lugia has in the water when surfing in that same area. You do not need to edit the Surfing data in any way.
7) Save your progress, either by clicking the Diskette icon in the upper toolbar or under "File-Save (As)".
Congratulations, you just fixed the game and can now use the editing program. Lucky you!
With that out of the way, let's go over what the actual Pros and Cons are of this romhack, so you can see if it's worth your time or not:
Pros:
+Ability to catch every single Pokemon, including multiple Legendaries, Starters and Fossils per playthru. Perfect for collectors, Legendary Hunters or those looking for an interesting Nuzlocke. Game flags when a Legendary is around so you can prepare accordingly.
+Usually a good selection of Pokemon per route. There is symmetry, for example Route 1 has Rattatta, Sentret and Zigzagoon as they're all Route 1 normal types, same with the three Route 1 birds. Viridian Forest has several bugs from all three gens ect.
+Legendary encounters before finishing the game: You can capture most Legendaries in the dungeons as soon as you can access them, in other cases they're cut off by a lake of water and await for you in new cells within an existing dungeon. You can go Legendary Hunting while barely having over half the badges, while the rest are found in Sevii Islands.
+Starters found in special grass fields near towns, require an HM to use. No need to fuss over your chosen Starter when you can get as many as you want from every generation eventually. Gen 1 are found outside Cerulean, Gen 2 within Celadon and Gen 3 in Fuchsia.
+Move Tutor and Move Forgetter both in the same house in Fuchsia, no need to wait for Sevii Islands in order to get to the Move Reminder.
+New inventories in Celadon Dept. Store and Indigo League shops, let you buy items like Lucky Eggs and every single type of PokeBall to make up for their lack of availability without trading.
Cons:
-Romhack advertised as Physical/Special split. This is not the case, found out thru testing halfway thru the game it uses the early pre-split mechanics.
-Outside of encounter zones and addition of new areas, there is pretty much no difference to the average Fire Red playthru: Same enemy teams, Same Gym Leaders, Same items ect. No QoL systems in place
-BUGGY! The biggest oversights and how to fix them were already outlined in the spoiler above. There are several less serious bugs you can play the game with, I will outline the ones I found, I never encountered a crash or similar serious issue:
*Celadon Dept Store, little girl who gives you TMs in exchange for drinks no longer does. These three TMs are inaccessible because of this.
*In the floor below, there is a Gentleman who has a memory leak issue. He will say the same thing the last opponent you fought did when they lost, leading to some funny results. If you just booted up the game and didn't fight anybody, he gives you random gibberish like you would see in some Super Glitches from Gen 1.
*May is used to signal that there is Legendary Pokemon around. Usually, that's not a problem, however, in some instances she may not load in quick enough when you travel to a location and she will teleport in front of you, unlike other NPCs who are already there. This is purely visual, however in The Power Plant there is a memory issue bug where she is, in fact, an Electrode in disguise. Every single time you talk to her there, you trigger the "Trap Electrode" encounter with a static leveled Electrode, each and every single time. After battle, you can take a step away and she will respawn, leading to the same encounter if you talk to her again. You can rapidly grind this Electrode for easy XP, EVs or simple catch it en masse if you want for whatever reason.
*Pokemon Center in Indigo League does not heal, you need to use PC to deposit/withdraw Pokemon in order to heal them.
-Sevii Islands have no unique encounters, same ones as in the base game aside from the Legendary Pokemon.
-Some Pokemon caught within the romhack will not have abilities when traded over to other games. Literally, "No Ability" ability that does nothing, all you have to do is open up your save in PKHex and change the Pokemon's ability to what it says in the game and it will be fixed when you override the data for the offending Pokemon. Most of the Pokemon in this romhacks are not bankable, if you're going for that for whatever reason, and I can't guarantee you that the no-ability bugged mon, even when fixed, will be able to transfer over either.
As you can see, this is a rather simplistic, rough around the edges 386 hack. I am sure there is many better ones, but if you want a low-maintenance one that just gives you different encounters, you can't go wrong with this one. In fact, aside from the bugs, some of the negatives might not be a problem for you, for example familiarity with the game so you can focus on using different teams in the game you played before. For some, no QoL changes or Physical/Special split or even the need to patch in the rom yourself before playing may be buzzkills, and in that case I am sure you can find a 386 hack that has those as well and works better. I got what I came here for, and I reckon I will come back to this one the same way I am coming back to my GC romhacks for unique movesets, except this time it will be to farm rare or unique Pokemon instead. For example, the no-ability bug I described can be a boon if I want to catch Slakoth in this romhack, just imagine the mayhem a Slaking without Truant can cause. In fact, I might do just that if Gen 4 will allow.
If you're not interested in a normal playthru, I do recommend this romhack at least if you plan on going Legendary Hunting or doing a nuzlocke, as this one is perfect for those.
As for me, I am moving on to Gen 4. There is no PokeBank equivalent program, so I will have to transfer Pokemon, both Gen 4 and 3 alike, in batches thru real hardware. I am doing a HGSS romhack next, not a DPP one as the former is a direct sequel to FRLG and I will take any continuity the games actually have. DPP is a spiritual sequel to Gen 2 anyways, so it's more fitting. I will first have to do some tests to see how well my flashcart roms and actual carts play along with one another, so it might take me some time. I do miss Trigger's PC already, best I got will be PKHex going forward and that one doesn't allow transfer between saves, only direct editing of save files which I consider cheating. Hopefully I won't need it as some QoL features like seeing your IVs/EVs and Hidden Powers will be available in-game with the upcoming romhacks I got in store.
A streamer I sometimes watch recently played the Mariomon hack we discussed here earlier
I'm dreading seeing her get to the troon braille part and being rudely reminded that even the seemingly neutral are now made to be gay and obnoxious at all times
Gens 3+4 will essentially be timeless because Emerald, Platinum and HGSS are arguably the top 3 greatest in the series, and are also among the easiest to ROM hack.
