Pokemon Radical Red shows us that despite the balance issues that pokemon has now, we should thank our lucky stars that it isn't balanced by fans.
You may be asking "prolific digital entertainment critic Harmless_xd, why doth thou decry this rom hack so?" Well, pokemon radical red is a difficulty hack first and foremost, the worst kind! This isn't to say I hate difficulty hacks, there have been ones I've enjoyed (I remember I liked unbound better than this one), but the issue I take with difficulty hacks like this is that the "improved balancing" is almost always worse, and the developers seem to be unable to make a challenging fight without giving the opposition a shit ton of legendaries. This versus pokemon insurgence is actually flirting versus harassment.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, that's just the abstract of this review. The main features of this game include pokemon balance changes, updated quality of life, every pokemon you could ever ask for, and some new story beats. About what you'd expect. It's also using modern mechanics, so physical special split, megas, gen 8+ moves, the works. It all sounds like a lot of fun, and when glancing at the changes to pokemon you think "wow I wanna try that!" Sadly, the balancing is horrible and what kills the entire game for me.
Now, the list of balance changes is enormous. It's a great read if you're in the mood for a heart attack. Many of the changes feel completely thoughtless and the only object was "let's make every pokemon broken!" which sounds kinda funny, until you realize that the overbuffed pokemon as well as the "old reliable" just stomp all the other ones into irrelevance. In an attempt to equalize power creep, the only thing it did was make it worse. It's almost like the game knows this, because for the most part, they are not using the newly buffed, supposedly "now good" pokemon. Maybe they'll show these new picks off early on, but mid to late game? They're using ol' reliable.
Sabrina is using a psyspam trick room team with hatterene, indeedee-f, ursaluna, crawdaunt and mega gardevoir.
Blaine uses a regular ass sun team that is effortlessly countered by using a pelipper, which isn't hard to find at all. His sunflora and typhlosion are not threatening.
Claire has a fucking magearna for no reason, and one of the actually good new pokemon in mega duraludon with its comically overpowered ability that just... turns off recoil and stat drops from moves. Why not, who gives a fuck.
From there, all of your opponents are just legendaries. Route 23 Bue has kartana because fuck you.
Brendan has Jirachi, Deoxys, Zapdos and Lando-T because fuck you.
Lorelei has either calyrex ice or primal kyogre because fuck you.
Bruno has zacian crowned (he needs it).
Lance has mega salamence, a new broken dialga form with 775BST and melmetal for no reason.
By the time you get to champion Blue the only "normal" pokemon he has is a scarf ditto, everything else is some busted up the ass box legendary or something comparable.
With all these new options, who did I fall back on for both of my playthroughs?
Rillaboom, mega salamence, mega metagross, corviknight, latios, and one of the only useful buffed pokemon in drapion (he needed wicked blow, apparently). You'll notice that these are all the good pokemon and only one of them is a buffed option.
Second playthrough I went with some lesser picks, with my only really good pokemon being clefable. Delcatty got special attacking huge power, cradily gets sappy seed, mega absol gets sharpness, and then well. Feraligatr and Entei didn't actually get anything I just like them. My all star lineup.
They made the endgame a true exercise in frustration.
Maybe my team composition was just bad, but I often felt like my pokemon were just getting stat checked by the big fuck you legendaries. I also feel this because all the non legendaries went down pretty easy.
Even when going out of my way to use the buffed pokemon, they still paled in comparison to the ones who were already good, or the lucky few who got buffed way too hard. It's worth noting that both of these were done in version 3.1, but looking at the changelog for 4.0 does not inspire confidence.
I think that's my issue though. A lot of the late game team design is just kind of lazy. It's a lot easier to make a boss fight difficult by giving them a bunch of overpowered pokemon instead of trying to think of an actually well put together team. I'm talking as if the early game is exempt from this issue though, because it's really not, but at the very least it is much more manageable, since you aren't as liable to getting straight up stat checked. Misty was definitely one of the harder fights for me because of her always annoying starmie, as well as the technician floatzel and protein frogadier, but it didn't feel too unfair because, well, these pokemon (for the most part) weren't that much stronger than mine stats wise. Surge pulls out a mega manectric a bit too early imo but I think I kicked his ass so idk lol. Same can't be said for the shitty endgame.
This last point is more of a me issue than anything, but one problem I have with a lot of difficulty hacks like this is that they really just feel like boss rushes played in a battle simulator. This isn't to say I didn't care about any of my pokemon, or that I take massive issue with using more than 6 (had almost a full box of reserves), but exploring kanto with amped up gym leaders isn't super exciting from a roleplaying perspective. Rom hacks with original regions are able to dodge this issue, but with kanto, a region I've play through countless times, I'm not super inspired and I don't feel like I'm on an "adventure". I feel like I'm just on auto pilot until the next boss fight, because with a few exceptions all of the trainers in this game are cannon fodder. Any training outside of ev training is pretty much pointless, because the game gives you more than enough exp and resources to hit the level cap within minutes. This isn't a bad thing for this type of game, but it kinda makes the whole "adventure" aspect of pokemon fall kind of flat for me.
Radical Red certainly wasn't a joyless experience for me. If anything I have some weird Stockholm Syndrome for it. Despite how bullshit it can be, despite how stupid a lot of the balancing is, pokemon is fun and it's hard for me to not have a good time playing it. My latest playthrough may have been frustrating, but I did have some fun, and it was somewhat satisfying to take down some opponents (sadly beating the elite 4 was more like a "thank god it's over" and not a "hooray I'm goated"). It was... an experience. A heavily flawed, often frustrating experience, but I guess I can't say that I hated it.
I do desperately need the trend of "game freak can't balance shit, here's my improved list" (500x worse) to end. Ledian is going to be bad forever you we just need to make peace with that.
You may be asking "prolific digital entertainment critic Harmless_xd, why doth thou decry this rom hack so?" Well, pokemon radical red is a difficulty hack first and foremost, the worst kind! This isn't to say I hate difficulty hacks, there have been ones I've enjoyed (I remember I liked unbound better than this one), but the issue I take with difficulty hacks like this is that the "improved balancing" is almost always worse, and the developers seem to be unable to make a challenging fight without giving the opposition a shit ton of legendaries. This versus pokemon insurgence is actually flirting versus harassment.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, that's just the abstract of this review. The main features of this game include pokemon balance changes, updated quality of life, every pokemon you could ever ask for, and some new story beats. About what you'd expect. It's also using modern mechanics, so physical special split, megas, gen 8+ moves, the works. It all sounds like a lot of fun, and when glancing at the changes to pokemon you think "wow I wanna try that!" Sadly, the balancing is horrible and what kills the entire game for me.
Now, the list of balance changes is enormous. It's a great read if you're in the mood for a heart attack. Many of the changes feel completely thoughtless and the only object was "let's make every pokemon broken!" which sounds kinda funny, until you realize that the overbuffed pokemon as well as the "old reliable" just stomp all the other ones into irrelevance. In an attempt to equalize power creep, the only thing it did was make it worse. It's almost like the game knows this, because for the most part, they are not using the newly buffed, supposedly "now good" pokemon. Maybe they'll show these new picks off early on, but mid to late game? They're using ol' reliable.
Sabrina is using a psyspam trick room team with hatterene, indeedee-f, ursaluna, crawdaunt and mega gardevoir.
Blaine uses a regular ass sun team that is effortlessly countered by using a pelipper, which isn't hard to find at all. His sunflora and typhlosion are not threatening.
Claire has a fucking magearna for no reason, and one of the actually good new pokemon in mega duraludon with its comically overpowered ability that just... turns off recoil and stat drops from moves. Why not, who gives a fuck.
From there, all of your opponents are just legendaries. Route 23 Bue has kartana because fuck you.
Brendan has Jirachi, Deoxys, Zapdos and Lando-T because fuck you.
Lorelei has either calyrex ice or primal kyogre because fuck you.
Bruno has zacian crowned (he needs it).
Lance has mega salamence, a new broken dialga form with 775BST and melmetal for no reason.
By the time you get to champion Blue the only "normal" pokemon he has is a scarf ditto, everything else is some busted up the ass box legendary or something comparable.
With all these new options, who did I fall back on for both of my playthroughs?
Rillaboom, mega salamence, mega metagross, corviknight, latios, and one of the only useful buffed pokemon in drapion (he needed wicked blow, apparently). You'll notice that these are all the good pokemon and only one of them is a buffed option.
Second playthrough I went with some lesser picks, with my only really good pokemon being clefable. Delcatty got special attacking huge power, cradily gets sappy seed, mega absol gets sharpness, and then well. Feraligatr and Entei didn't actually get anything I just like them. My all star lineup.
They made the endgame a true exercise in frustration.
Maybe my team composition was just bad, but I often felt like my pokemon were just getting stat checked by the big fuck you legendaries. I also feel this because all the non legendaries went down pretty easy.
Even when going out of my way to use the buffed pokemon, they still paled in comparison to the ones who were already good, or the lucky few who got buffed way too hard. It's worth noting that both of these were done in version 3.1, but looking at the changelog for 4.0 does not inspire confidence.
I think that's my issue though. A lot of the late game team design is just kind of lazy. It's a lot easier to make a boss fight difficult by giving them a bunch of overpowered pokemon instead of trying to think of an actually well put together team. I'm talking as if the early game is exempt from this issue though, because it's really not, but at the very least it is much more manageable, since you aren't as liable to getting straight up stat checked. Misty was definitely one of the harder fights for me because of her always annoying starmie, as well as the technician floatzel and protein frogadier, but it didn't feel too unfair because, well, these pokemon (for the most part) weren't that much stronger than mine stats wise. Surge pulls out a mega manectric a bit too early imo but I think I kicked his ass so idk lol. Same can't be said for the shitty endgame.
This last point is more of a me issue than anything, but one problem I have with a lot of difficulty hacks like this is that they really just feel like boss rushes played in a battle simulator. This isn't to say I didn't care about any of my pokemon, or that I take massive issue with using more than 6 (had almost a full box of reserves), but exploring kanto with amped up gym leaders isn't super exciting from a roleplaying perspective. Rom hacks with original regions are able to dodge this issue, but with kanto, a region I've play through countless times, I'm not super inspired and I don't feel like I'm on an "adventure". I feel like I'm just on auto pilot until the next boss fight, because with a few exceptions all of the trainers in this game are cannon fodder. Any training outside of ev training is pretty much pointless, because the game gives you more than enough exp and resources to hit the level cap within minutes. This isn't a bad thing for this type of game, but it kinda makes the whole "adventure" aspect of pokemon fall kind of flat for me.
Radical Red certainly wasn't a joyless experience for me. If anything I have some weird Stockholm Syndrome for it. Despite how bullshit it can be, despite how stupid a lot of the balancing is, pokemon is fun and it's hard for me to not have a good time playing it. My latest playthrough may have been frustrating, but I did have some fun, and it was somewhat satisfying to take down some opponents (sadly beating the elite 4 was more like a "thank god it's over" and not a "hooray I'm goated"). It was... an experience. A heavily flawed, often frustrating experience, but I guess I can't say that I hated it.
I do desperately need the trend of "game freak can't balance shit, here's my improved list" (500x worse) to end. Ledian is going to be bad forever you we just need to make peace with that.
stovetop
6 months ago