A look back at: Pokemon Dark Crystal

Walkthrough here.

It's only been three days, but I'm done with another ROM hack, this time an unfinished beta. One thing to note is that there's just a ton of unfinished ROM hacks out there, and many have a ton of stuff advertised, yet not fully implemented. This one, well, it's a bit like an unfinished version of Gaia, which was mostly finished in that case. Dark Crystal features mons, moves, abilities, and mechanics up to Gen-6 for an Emerald hack, yet not everything is totally complete (the repel system is supposed to be the Gen-5 repel system for instance, but isn't included as of yet).

Nevertheless, this one certainly caught my eye with what it offered. And the beta shows just enough for me to see this is as something that if ever finished, is sure to be a lot of fun to play. Chaos Rush, the author of Dark Violet which I did my previous walkthrough on, had a hand with the sprites, and several other major names in the community also had some of their stuff implemented here and there. The beta goes past the first badge and ends at a cave after it, but there was enough to last me a few days of playing this hack and get as much info on it. The mission system is probably the biggest thing of note, it's somewhat similar to Dark Cry: The Legend of Giratina's, except all the missions are done from a specific board and not from NPCs. Though I guess if there's one thing to change, is it really necessary that after accepting the mission, you gotta find the person giving the mission to actually start it? Still, the rewards here are interesting, more than just money because you can get certain items and it's possible to repeat these missions.

So yes, Dark Crystal is intriguing, but naturally is going to have room for improvement. This hack by the way has nothing to do with the original Crystal.

A look back at: Pokemon Dark Violet

Walkthrough here.

Yep, another reimagining of Kanto. These reimaginings of things shouldn't be taken lightly, as they are fans making a better representation of the original games. And Dark Violet is the usual Kanto playthrough but with a number of twists. Having new moves from Gen-4 and Gen-5 is very, very nice, and some of the TMs got redone for that. Though TMs aren't actually reusable though. The music was redone, as was all the spriting, though having to have the sprites be of the R/S/E kind even though FR/LG worked just fine is odd. Progression is MOSTLY what you would expect for a Kanto game, with a few twists and slightly more linearity due to several...excuses as to why you can't go to a certain route. A rampaging Gyarados destroying bridges, or a Shellder giving bikers some trouble. Funny excuses. Also there's some small comedy in the beginning towns and a few references to the Mother franchise which were nice.

Adding new rivals in the opposite gender counterpart Red/Green as well as Kamon (folks know him as the G/S/C/HG/SS rival Silver) was interesting. Adding Archer and Ariana from HG/SS gave a bit more fluidity with known characters going from unknown to known. Adding Pokemon from Johto (like Sunflora), Hoenn (like Altaria), and Sinnoh (like Bronzong) was also interesting, plus getting the trade evolutions through new kinds of stones instead of something like friendship or level up was wonderful. You definitely can get all 210, yes 210, Pokemon in this game. The progression points were interesting, such as the plot twist of another member of the Oak family being Viridian's gym leader AND the fifth badge you are to get, plus entering the Cerulean Cave and incorporating Mewtwo into Giovanni's main plot were cool. Watching Kamon try to play the part of the renegade of Team Rocket against the others in the organization was interesting, and he sticks to his jerk-like character the entire time as opposed to every other major character. This hack certainly got dark when a Marowak was murdered by Rocket grunts, and tied into the Pokemon Tower quest well.

If anything needed work here, I'd say it's the post-game. The Battle Maze is interesting, as is going to a mountain to catch Heatran. The place is honestly way too small, and two towns aren't that useful overall. Still, a reimagining of Kanto worked out well enough for this hack and I enjoyed things here.

A look back at: Pokemon Dark Cry: The Legend of Giratina

First off, here's my walkthrough of the whole thing. Gotta include it here and in my walkthroughs page since GBAhacks is gone now. And now we get to this hack and I made a mistake because I was trying to get Pokemon Dark Cry, not Pokemon Dark Cry: The Legend of Giratina. I'm going to have to find that one at some point, they're both completely different hacks, and I ended up playing the one where Giratina had the major role.

I think it's a fantastic idea to have the automatic level cap increase. It prevents the annoying grinding of having to get stronger to beat a trainer who would be on the level of Whitney and her Miltank (to use an allusion of some kind). The only thing to really scale your levels to are the wild Pokemon on routes. Sadly, not all mons are available in this hack, this was in a beta version and Hacksrepairman deserves some credit for fixing notable issues, but the hack is still not complete and it doesn't have a notable post game. But enough of that, I'm still on positives, and I do say that the idea of a good and an evil route is interesting, even if the gaps for changing karma are a bit wide, there's some way to change the way things go. Either you're a good person who will stop Giovanni and Giratina, or a bad person, possibly even worse than Giovanni, letting Giratina swallow others in darkness and catching it yourself afterwards. Yeah, you can basically usurp Giovanni in this game as Team Rocket's leader.

But now to the rest. The idea of day/night is implemented very loosely, and Route 601 and a few missions are the only things that deal with nighttime well. Everything else just doesn't use it. The PokePaper which you can buy in towns can have interesting ideas, but most are just "this trainer wants a rematch" and you don't really get much out of it in general. The missions all are attempts to make something interesting to get the Trion Token commodity, and they can be interesting or noninteresting. Stuff like the hide and seek family, the witcher things (and even then this one kinda sucks because you're supposed to play minigames in a special building, but it's still under construction and you get the items anyways) and having to have a package delivered in time are great. Then you have the simple "trade x for y" missions which are okay. I do like the idea that the third town in the game is where you exchange your tokens so you can get stuff like Eevee or Rare Candies, not to mention a certain mission in the same town is considered a daily mission, but you gotta basically grind said mission to get Pendular, who requires 660 of those things to get. And if you're looking to get other stuff, those tokens, well, it really is a lot like being addicted at an arcade. Fun stuff when it's fun, but there's definitely loads to improve on.

A look back at: Pokemon Adventure: Blue Chapter

 Just four days from my previous look back and I am already done with the next hack. Granted, a beta, but still. In any case, the Adventure X Chapter games, I do plan to indeed check out all the side chapters as beta as they are. Yellow was already done, so I decided my next one would involve Blue. The romhacking scene sure does love making tributes to all sorts of characters and such, and I feel like Blue/Gary doesn't get nearly as much coverage as he should. Being the son of Oak, you'd definitely feel eager to know about his adventures, how he got through everything and managed to be the champion before Red did. Playing as Blue felt quite nice.

At least until you see what he goes through. Of course, Blue is as arrogant as ever. He loves his family, and wants to keep the pride for his family going strong. While I'm not too familiar with the Pokemon Adventure manga, I can definitely see the Oak family being a line of champions (because Prof. Oak himself was one). I can also see Koga being a Team Rocket member, and Agatha being an old acquaintance of Oak's. There's not a whole lot of actual substance here. From what I played in Red Chapter, I do know he tries, and fails, to catch Mew. Interesting that this time it's from Blue's perspective, who got there first, but with Red's loss now in a cutscene. There was a weird little sidequest too, and you can come back to get a Pikachu of your own after it. But there were some odd references as I went along, with the herp derp kid, the old man who does a Sailor Moon reference, and Ash's family apparently being in the game. Furthermore, there's no catching of Pokemon as the game ends early before you are able to do any of that. No Pokeballs, you just get your Scyther in the beginning, a Charmander from Oak, and if you remember where it was, the Pichu (now a Pikachu). That's it. You battle your bully Mike, Koga of Team Rocket, the Mew (not winnable), and also a Machoke that was after the old man I mentioned before.

Real shame that these other chapters were left unfinished for years. There's a ton of potential you can probably salvage from it.

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.

A look back at: Vandal Hearts

 

Heh, I finished this game almost an entire year ago. Only due to my stupidly annoying schedule and that I wanted to get other franchises out of the way, I put the review for this one aside until later. In any case, Vandal Hearts is Konami's own Final Fantasy Tactics. Or perhaps their own Shining Force? There's not a whole lot I can really say about it all, it's an isometric tactical RPG, but in this case both sides get their respective turns instead of whenever their turns show up, so it's a lot more basic. The standard equips are there, and the battles play as tactical RPGs go. The class changes are quite nice, but the big thing here is that the monk and armor classes are HUGE losers in the long run, so it's important to figure out the best choice for mages and knights beforehand.

Then there's the whole deal with all the hidden stuff. Besides the squares for getting hidden items and such, there's those trials of Toroah for getting the Vandalier class, and good lord, is that thing overpowered. I would almost say it shouldn't be that way, though having to worry about Kain's Plasma Wave spell early at the start of the final chapter does even things out slightly. The Vandalier class has access to all spells including that one, but I'd be damned if that thing didn't cost me a lot in terms of party. Thankfully this game has no permadeath, despite all the blood that gets spewed from kills.

The plot certainly has that Final Fantasy Tactics feel to it, a hero is sort of fallen because of his own father's status, while another villainous person likes to spit in his face often. He at least has the help of many others who will do whatever it takes against the tyrannical oppressors. Yet despite their efforts, the tyrants do get their way before their demise, they slaughter any sort of opposition when necessary, and it gets even worse when the bigwigs start backstabbing each other. Lust for power, this is a big issue in a lot of video games and there's always that political intrigue that loves to show face.

A look back at: Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen

 

It's the same! But different. But still same! Yeah, gotta find some fun in the Might and Magic series either combining games, or letting you import characters. Certainly more of that medievalness going around...wait that's right, there's a lot of tech stuff incorporated too. As well as familiar faces all around. Might and Magic IV+V, World of Xeen, keeps to the formula of the third game, while having a double dose. There's really not much different in the gameplay department, and characters can be imported. Music is basically the same more or less, but if there's one thing gameplay-wise that needs checking, it's this: imported parties have a much better time. Yeah, freshly starting is going to be a little harder than usual, and that sucks. Apart from that, veterans of M&M will see this as something similar to an expansion, with a few things to catch the eye. Like, say, a floor set up like a freakin' crossword puzzle.

So what's the deal with Sheltem and Corak and why do we have to hear about them all the time? Wait, Sheltem we know is a bad guy, and Corak is a good guy. Sheltem has been around. The party from back in M&M3 journeyed with Corak to battle Sheltem as he ran away, as M&M3 was a game without a proper final boss. But now we get to see some things. First off, Sheltem naturally is our big bad, impersonating King Alamar and making life a living hell for people on Xeen after Xeen himself has passed. However, he's an android? And Corak too. It was an interesting info dump to read all the stuff that was in the ship logs that both Corak and Sheltem had, and the fact that they both had memory banks that kept them where they are. Sheltem, of course, doesn't want the upper hand taken away from him, and basically ambushes Corak at whatever chance he gets. The party in M&M5 really just take the role of bystanders who basically turn the tide of things simply by fetchquesting, without much in the way of battling Sheltem, because Corak decides to activate a MUTUAL SELF DESTRUCT system. Personally it's quite hilarious that they both have it, and I guess it only works if the two were together. One seriously wanted to live and be evil, that was his goal.

And then there's the weird wedding where you have to save the bride and groom in different dungeons. And what's with the Dragon Pharaoh? Totally weird characters and weirder stuff. I'll continue to mess around with this franchise, hoping there's some more interesting plot stuff like this. It was quite the adventure.