Version played: 2.20

So close to perfection but I do have an issue with some of the difficulty balancing, especially in Johto early on. Maybe giving every gym 5 Pokemon isn't always the best idea.

But outside of that the difficulty isn't too crazy. This definitely isn't a difficulty hack. It is, as the name implies, a more polished version of Crystal. You can run, there's extra content, all Pokemon are capturable without trading, the story in Kanto has been GREATLY expanded and almost feels better than how it was done in HGSS even.

In fact Kanto is where this hack really shines. There's a bunch of extra content in it that mostly feels like "oh, well that makes sense" and doesn't feel like something that was just randomly added in. Some of the content ties into Pokemon the Movie 2000, other parts are cameo fights from former Kanto E-4 and characters.

There's also a very nice surprise at the very, very end too but I haven't finished that fight yet. The true final boss is a super boss in every way possible. Nearly lv 100 team and has some legendaries. I still haven't beaten yet and I'm not sure when I will. It's also NOT Red, though that fight is still in this game.

Basically I recommend this to anyone looking for a good Gen 2 hack. It's one of the better ones besides Crystal Clear and it's nice to see a version of Gen that is almost even more enhanced than the Remakes we got in every way except graphics.

Major improvement for Like a Dragon 7. The battle system and job system are tweaked to be a lot more fun. Positioning matters and the new jobs are just simply more fun. Some familiar ones do return though.

Story is good and almost as twisty as Like a Dragon 7. Maybe I'd say that this one starts off stronger and ends juuust a tad weaker, but even so the mystery behind Akane makes for a fantastic start to the game.

The Hawaii map is great. I played this one with the Japanese dub and was nice hearing the mix of Japanese and American English actors whenever they decided to use them. There's a few weird ones, like Bryce having this very thick Japanese accent, but some of the side characters like the Cops, gang members, and some random civilians have excellent English that added to the immersion.

One of my biggest complaints about LAD 7 was the difficulty balancing. It felt like there were at least 2-3 moments where you had to grind, usually at an arena or a boring underground place. I never really had to grind in Infinite Wealth. I decide to grind 1 single time for the final boss at the Tartarus-esque dungeon, but this was actually kinda fun compared to the options LAD 7 offered you.

I did have a few issues here and there, the biggest one being the length of the mini-game tutorials. There's only really two big offenders. Sujimon and the Dondoko Island Mini-game.

The Dondoko Island tutorial did NOT have to be 1-2 hours long and I hope that they consider adding an option to skip it in a future update. I do not care for Dondoko and I'm sure i'm not the only one. It interrupts a part of the story where things are starting to get really good too and is a total pace breaker.

But enough complaining about the island, after all it was after just about an hour and thirty minutes out of a 72ish hour game.

Big props to the music team. Some of the battle themes are absolute fire. Slugfest and the Palekana battle theme are hype shit.

Overall, I would say that I really enjoyed this one! Like a Dragon 7 left me with some mixed feelings. It was a great, but frustrating game for me. The team seemed to learn that gating progress behind money and grinding isn't always fun and it shows. One of my favorite features was showing the recommended level and level of equipment for each story mission.

It isn't my game of the year but it's a fantastic game through and through.