Pokemon Romhacks
This page will be a compilation of the Pokemon Romhacks I play, and how I felt about them and if I'd recommend them. The Pokemon franchise is one that after almost 30 years still has a magnetic pull on me and scratches an itch that no other series has managed to scratch - I just think they're neat. Fortunately, it's a fantastic time to be a fan of the franchise as the modding and romhacking scene is very mature (at least in terms of development prowess) with lots of stellar ones available for playing, so I'm going to slowly try and work my way through the most recommended ones.
Pokémon Unbound
Rating: 10/10. Play this!
Review/Thoughts
Pokemon Unbound is a long running Romhack built on FireRed/LeafGreen that is in a completed state. It utilizes an entirely new region with a mishmash of pokemon from all gens and the end result is a game I felt was something Game Freak could have made, but a lot better. No obnoxious edge writing or plots, little to no difficulty curve issues, plenty of opportunity to explore higher difficulty achievements in the form of a very difficult battle tower - this should be the gold standard for romhacks. The quality of this is incredible and I can't recommend it enough. There is an insane amount of content here and it's all quality. I'm writing this maybe 2 years after playing it, so the fact I still remember how much I was blown away by it should speak volumes. If what you're looking for is Vanila Pokemon++, this is the one to pick.Pokémon Rocket Edition
Rating: 5.5/10. Worth checking out.
Review/Thoughts
Another game where I'm working off 2 year old memories here, but this one is at the tail end of the spectrum of Unbound in terms of "this is something that tonally feels like a Game Freak title." Corny edge humour riddled throughout, the base conceit is you're going through the events of Gen 1 as a member of Team Rocket, stealing pokemon, accruing a bounty and impacting the story as you go along. The reason why I say "worth checking out" is because this is fairly short, is complete and while I can't say it's very good, it is functional and worth experiencing as a bit of curio. I don't have strong feelings or memories about it. I don't recall the bounty system being very noteworthy, although that's because I never felt compelled to steal pokemon.Pokémon Prism
Rating: 7/10. Wouldn't recommend it yet.
Review/Thoughts
I played this one recently, so I can finally start giving more thoughtful reviews. The reason for my note in rating, though, is because this Romhack is incomplete and comes to a rather abrupt end where content just stops. I wasn't aware of this, or I probably would have avoided it.My first impressions of this were very promising - it had all sorts of cool customization options for your character's model, skin tone, outfit, outfit colours, etc. That's impressive given it's built on the Gen 2 engine. Very early on you're also given a novel segment where you play as a Pokemon, in order to get through a cave sequence, which had me pretty hyped about the rest of the hack. The hack has a lot of content to it - there's four regions (two original and Kanto & Johto) with 20 badges available between them all. It imports pokemon from all gens for a fun ensemble, including adding new typings to the franchise, which is neat but I didn't care for as it's annoying having to suddenly account for Wheezing being a Gas type or some such.
This glowing impression started to fade as I got deeper into the game, as it became clear that it had the rough design quirk (possibly inherited from Gen 2?) of there not being enough XP to go around to keep your party at parity with the trainers you encounter. Despite battling everyone I could, I was still frequently 5-10 levels behind gym leaders and notable trainer battles. At the 11/20 badges mark I had a team in the high 50s while every encounter was in the low 70s, with the highest level wild pokemon available to me being in the 30-40 range. It was an aspect of the romhack I didn't care for and left a sour taste as my time with it went on. I had an okay time with it - I think one of my takeaways from it is I don't love the Gen 2 engine. It feels very very limited for QoL features.