With big pandemic comes the leisure to play Dragon Quest VII as much as I can. I am fully expected to take a really long time with it. But at the same time, I have made the decision to continue running through Pokemon ROM hacks, of course, always checking for quality and everything. Of course, quality can be hard to come by in some hacks, and well Flora Sky at least tries...
Glazed and Light Platinum had pretty good art styles and both made some mostly solid attempts at decent plots. Flora Sky makes it seem like Shaymin is the central mon for the plot, giving it the title backdrop as well as several story scenes with you and the Elite Four member Flash witnessing Shaymin, along with other legendaries Dialga and Giratina fighting. Wait, why are those two fighting? There's not much to go by. The sad thing is this is probably the most original thing about this hack, and there's only about three scenes to deal with, and even moreso when you actually get the chance to catch Shaymin early on.
For the rest of Flora Sky, it feels like a very strange crossover. Sprites are the same as the R/S/E games, both Team Magma and Team Aqua are fought, and of course the storyline of Groudon vs. Kyogre will play out. Wally will help, along with a new trainer named Sky as well as Steven and the region's champion, for some reason it's Cynthia. Even moreso there's even more fanservice with characters like Bertha and Alder, Elite Four members of different gens who are in the Elite Four here (Alder was Gen-5's champion). Wattson is a gym leader, Gima/Grimsley is a demoted Elite Four member who is the eighth gym leader, Pryce is a gym leader, and Iris is a gym leader. Bits and pieces of Hoenn locales are scattered throughout this world, but many actually remain unchanged aside from the mons you could encounter. Shoal Cave, Victory Road, the Abandoned Ship, Altering Cave, Meteor Falls, Battle Frontier, all get recycled, and even some Pokemon Gyms are either completely reused in some way, or uniquely used (Lavaridge and Mossdeep gyms for example are rerun as Magma and Aqua hideout areas). Oh yeah, and this ROM hack honestly has TOO MUCH WATER. Yep, I'm unloading that silly meme for this hack, because there really is too much water.
I could forgive these crossover-like things if and only if the game wouldn't of course corrupt my save file. As is the case, this was a problem I dealt with, meaning I had to rely on savestates for the most part. While a corrupted save file is something I can bypass, the issue arises upon beating the League, having to be forced to the title screen, attempt to load and oh god did my save just die? And it happened at a very inopportune moment, after the second time I beat the League in other words, making it worse is that I had to beat the League a second time in order to use the final HM, Rock Climb. As was the case, in order to see the rest of the legendaries, I went with the walk through walls code to bypass this, see what I miss, and find out the diving spot to get Kyogre is missing, so I miss out on that as well as Arceus. God damnit.
I did say Flora Sky tried though, and it didn't do too bad with some notable things, such as the intercom system near the PokeCenters, the interconnectivity of the main region, and even the mechanics for obtaining some mons. The honey trees from Gen-4 require a bit of time, but are actually save-scummable, something the ones from D/P weren't. Headbutting trees is also here, and there's some legendaries that show up as wild encounters. It's all neat and I do give it some credit for this kind of stuff. Very even despite the odd crossover-like appeal I saw.
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