>>56070941I haven't played either of his previous two hacks, but he seems to have a solid approach insofar as he actually gives a shit about the design philosophy of the games he's modding. That's more than can be said for 90% of Pokemon Romhackers.
I mean, the flaws he laid out account for many of the reasons why I don't really play vanilla Pokemon games anymore outside of stuff like Stadium and Colosseum. It's definitely pretty lame looking at the rosters for Magma/Aqua Grunts, and a lot of the Gym Leaders are pretty lackluster, too. I also can't deny that Swampert just sort of coldcocks the other two starters, which is a shame because they're all really cool design-wise.
I do wonder which games he's comparing Emerald unfavorably to, though. I abandoned ship after Gen 6 and stopped paying attention altogether after Gen 7, but I distinctly remember XY featuring Team Flare admins with like, two Pokemon with incomplete movesets. At the very least, Emerald has some respectable post-game content, second only to the true top tier games like Platinum, HGSS, and BW2. I get the sense at this point that he's just sort of milking the "I'm gonna fix this game" goat for all it's worth.
Also, I think it's overstated how bad the movepools are in the older gens (even if it is a problem). The whole point was that TMs were supposed to be meaningful as a limited resource, and that the Trainer was demonstrably making their Pokemon better through them (as well as the Vitamins, Badge Boosts, etc).
