Tag: pokemon

Pokemon Reborn Hardcore

On the suggestion of Kernas on the BrainGoodGames discord I’ve been playing a fan-made pokemon adaptation called Pokemon Reborn Hardcore.

Long story short, it’s awesome. The most significant change is that there is a hard level cap on your pokemon (even ones that you have caught yourself) based on the gym badges you have. So before you beat the first gym, the max pokemon level you can have is 20, and the gym leader has a team of 6 level 20 pokemon. This is actually sort of roughly analogous to how my brother and I used to play the pokemon games, with the self-made restriction that each pokemon in your party had to be within one level of every other pokemon.

This means you really have to consider type advantages, train up appropriate guys, and not just brute force the whole game with one pokemon. I’m having a blast so far. Turns out pokemon with a couple important rules tweaks is actually super sweet (and it was pretty sweet before).

There are also a few more very nice quality of life changes such as:

1) Experience is gained much faster

2) There is a built-in 3x speed option

3) The game shows your EV’s if you’re into that (I’m not that hardcore)

Anyway, here is my squad. (They’re dope)

tiny-design:

The Battle Frontier in Pokemon Emerald was created as the ultimate set of endgame content to the game, at least in terms of battles. In creating a multitude of alternative battle experiences (whether it be randomized rental Pokemon in the Battle Factory, the cryptic rooms in the Battle Pike, etc.), the game was able to challenge the players for theoretically hundreds of hours, without having to create any new Pokemon.

Always thought it would be cool to riff on the pokemon core idea. Dragon warrior monsters and Ni-No-Kuni are the only games that come to mind are nice examples of that kind of thing. Hmm, maybe there are others I’m not thinking of?