Really hard to rate this one. I don't think it was very enjoyable, but I appreciate some aspects of it and the games it built upon to the point where I guess everything is evened out. There's definitely a lot of work to appreciate, but it's bogged down quite a bit.
Unfortunately, to me this wound up seeming like a strict downgrade of an experience compared to the original GSC. It accomplishes its base concept decently well at times but there are... bouts of amateur Pokémon romhacker energy that appear at times and it's never endearing. Also funnily enough, the horrid level scaling of the originals is barely fixed here, as the devs instead flipped it so the scaling became too intense between gyms. With universal fast travel being unlocked very early on, the hack gives almost zero incentive to go outside of gym cities since even grinding is arguably most efficient inside of gyms.
Replacing the final bosses with the dev team was hilariously dumb and having no tangible plot and path in the game (not even something moderately hands-off like the original) made it feel a lot more like an empty slog through JRPG battles wherein the RNG is constantly stacked against you. In a sense, this style made it feel as monotonous and boring as gen 1 but without any of the sauce and charm of those games' weird writing and glitchiness.
Because of all this, you have next to no reason to explore anything outside the cities once you have your final team, and the extra areas wind up feeling tacked on considering how empty and useless they often are. The game winds up just becoming an uncompelling loop of fight gym -> grind if you lose, then repeat. There's no sense of progression outside of just having your numbers go up (and unlocking rebuyable TMs), and for me that wasn't close to enough to make this a particularly good experience. It got extremely tedious as it went on to the point where I had to force myself to get through the last 1/3 of my run just because I love the general gen 2 aesthetic a lot.
All that said, this being a Pokémon gen 2 hack meant that it already had a pretty solid base, and the quality of life features present in this hack were impressive and cool to have. I'm glad trainer teams were beefed up in terms of composition. Related to that, giving gym leaders legendaries in the lategame was not a decision I agree with but it was still cool to see. The closest thing to this game retaining my interest was seeing just how ridiculous and varied the teams could get for reworked original trainers (didn't really care about the OCs). I also enjoyed the wider starter array, though personally I'd much rather have made the nonstandard starters become unlockable options for a new game plus, especially the babies/"hard" ones.
In summation, this hack is a competent and well put-together gen 2 battle simulator, but barely anything more. It doesn't invalidate the original games even slightly, and if anything it just makes me want to go back and play GSC or HGSS more instead. Crystal Clear in general is much more of an example of what fans can make in terms of sheer QOL and trainer design than an actual fun complete package of a hack. I'm sure tons of people would enjoy this considering it's a lot of fans' collective wet dream. However, to me it was a collection of missed marks and mild disappointment that just happened to be well constructed upon a game I already love. It reminded me that nonlinearity is not an inherently good way to design a game and should not be put up on a pedestal as much as it is in the current day.
Unfortunately, to me this wound up seeming like a strict downgrade of an experience compared to the original GSC. It accomplishes its base concept decently well at times but there are... bouts of amateur Pokémon romhacker energy that appear at times and it's never endearing. Also funnily enough, the horrid level scaling of the originals is barely fixed here, as the devs instead flipped it so the scaling became too intense between gyms. With universal fast travel being unlocked very early on, the hack gives almost zero incentive to go outside of gym cities since even grinding is arguably most efficient inside of gyms.
Replacing the final bosses with the dev team was hilariously dumb and having no tangible plot and path in the game (not even something moderately hands-off like the original) made it feel a lot more like an empty slog through JRPG battles wherein the RNG is constantly stacked against you. In a sense, this style made it feel as monotonous and boring as gen 1 but without any of the sauce and charm of those games' weird writing and glitchiness.
Because of all this, you have next to no reason to explore anything outside the cities once you have your final team, and the extra areas wind up feeling tacked on considering how empty and useless they often are. The game winds up just becoming an uncompelling loop of fight gym -> grind if you lose, then repeat. There's no sense of progression outside of just having your numbers go up (and unlocking rebuyable TMs), and for me that wasn't close to enough to make this a particularly good experience. It got extremely tedious as it went on to the point where I had to force myself to get through the last 1/3 of my run just because I love the general gen 2 aesthetic a lot.
All that said, this being a Pokémon gen 2 hack meant that it already had a pretty solid base, and the quality of life features present in this hack were impressive and cool to have. I'm glad trainer teams were beefed up in terms of composition. Related to that, giving gym leaders legendaries in the lategame was not a decision I agree with but it was still cool to see. The closest thing to this game retaining my interest was seeing just how ridiculous and varied the teams could get for reworked original trainers (didn't really care about the OCs). I also enjoyed the wider starter array, though personally I'd much rather have made the nonstandard starters become unlockable options for a new game plus, especially the babies/"hard" ones.
In summation, this hack is a competent and well put-together gen 2 battle simulator, but barely anything more. It doesn't invalidate the original games even slightly, and if anything it just makes me want to go back and play GSC or HGSS more instead. Crystal Clear in general is much more of an example of what fans can make in terms of sheer QOL and trainer design than an actual fun complete package of a hack. I'm sure tons of people would enjoy this considering it's a lot of fans' collective wet dream. However, to me it was a collection of missed marks and mild disappointment that just happened to be well constructed upon a game I already love. It reminded me that nonlinearity is not an inherently good way to design a game and should not be put up on a pedestal as much as it is in the current day.