A look back at: Pokemon Blazed Glazed

 What exactly does Blazed Glazed even mean? Should've probably made Blaziken into its mascot with that, but nah, it's more or less a refurbished version of Glazed. Air quotes on "refurbished" however, I gotta say, there were a few things that were...questionable. I enjoyed the new spriting of the mons in the original, plus the holdover voices that were given. Those were actually not in Blazed Glazed. There were some mons, like the prominent ones like Charizard and such, that got new sprites, but most got the regular sprite treatment. The cries are recycled and you can tell what replaces what in the dex this time. It honestly felt like Blazed Glazed was the prototype instead of the other way around. And the plot? It was entirely the same. No real differences whatsoever. The good news is that the plot of the original Glazed was decent enough that I can overlook the shortcomings, I enjoy the gym fights, the return to Johto, the crazy villains (including the church guy) and how everyone has some sort of ulterior motive. Plus the thing that allows you to hear Pokemon talk, and the fun dialogue with legendaries and that scarved Pikachu among other things.

Blazed Glazed only has one strength, and that's the better-used mons. There's a few Gen-6's added to the mix, while others got shuffled around. Some, sadly were rendered inaccessible (I don't believe you can get Wynaut, as there's no Lax Incense I can find that can breed a Wobbuffet with properly). Also some rather strange moments with wild encounters, like for example, Sylveon replaces Qwilfish, but you can encounter them while surfing in New Bark Town for instance. Surely enough, it's hard to say that Blazed Glazed would knock out it's apparent predecessor out of the water. It only really improved on new mons, new movesets, and that really was it. Everything was untouched or somehow made a little less great. Since Glazed is one of my favorite ROM hacks, Blazed Glazed doesn't fall too far behind, it was just, well, not as much of the improvement that I thought it was.