A look back at: Pokemon Grass Jewel

ROM Hacks. They tend to have some alright things to them in general. Sometimes they feel completely fresh, and other times you're revisiting locales in a different limelight. This is the latter. Emerald's plot is basically the same as it usually is, except with only one enemy team to stop, and well, there's an interesting plot twist with a professor hellbent on world destruction. Yes, a Pokemon professor wants to destroy the world while letting the so-called Team Dream be taking the blame.

Grass Jewel also gives you a false sense of security. Once you can use Poke Balls, every mart in the game sells LOADS of convenient stuff from Leftovers to Ultra Balls to every Repel, Escape Ropes, Quick Claws, and even the prices are adjusted to be easier. Also the vitamins are cheaper, you can buy every berry from one salesman, and every TM at the department store and then some. There's even a mart inside the Artisan Cave that sells both Master Balls and Rare Candy. Yikes. The meadows where you can get Eevee and the starters are nice freebies and are quaint. Also most moves tend to have more PP and much more power. I was also not expecting a few type changes such as Cut being Grass, Strength being Rock, and the Fairy type coming back. There's also Epic Justice, a surprise move that is used by uber trainers that replaces Splash and is essentially an unavoidable one-hit KO.

This is all offset by the weirdness of seeing sitcom characters around. And also level gaps more or less as the levels of wild mons are higher, and the trainer levels are also higher. The champion (who is BARNEY STINSON) has at least one Lv100 mon, while all the uber trainers, from Red to Eric to the Smallville cast to two characters from Buffy and two characters from Glee, all having Lv100 mons, and usually a full team. There's also for some reason the seven frontier brains who challenge you to double battles with Lv100 mons in random locations. So yes, there is a false sense of security with what you're offered with, as then you'll be facing the big challenges just as soon as you get to have a big advantage. It's a weird way to balance this hack.

Of course, I didn't like plenty of things too. I can appreciate the little usage of HMs this time around, but the opening of many areas feels strange to me. And the Safari Zone really does suck since so many areas are locked off. And I just HATE those NPC guards that block everything until certain points. And there's no justice for that invisible wall maze in the Neverland portion of the Storybrooke post-game.

Well here's a walkthrough as usual. I plan to have all my walkthroughs on GBAHacks at this point, as well as on my PokeCommunity account.