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Is Pokemon liquid crystal good?
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Yes and no. It depends on how much the good and bad appeals to you. First of all, this is going to be a long post, bear with me. I'll start by saying that I think the game's overrated. It's constantly mentioned in conversations regarding GSC adaptations on a later gen, Gen 3 ROMhacks in general, Johto stories in general, multi-region hack discussions, this is always tossed around. So naturally that makes me interested, it's a famous and popular ROMHack.
Positives: as a GSC remake, it is pretty good in that department. But there's some downsides to it, which I'll get to later. It's faithful to a fault in terms of certain details from Gen 2 that are less-than-stellar, replicated here. As a multi-region hack, it's very impressive. Johto, Kanto, and a big chunk of Orange Islands will make you put in a lot of hours into the game. I've been playing it on 2x speed and my overall game time is 60 hours. It's not incredibly difficult, it's not really grindy either. You will definitely get your entire team to the low 80s or even higher by the time you are at the last story part of the game. The music is the biggest highlight, fantastic renditions of Gen 2 songs with the Gen 3 sound. A good amount of fun in the game.
Negatives: as much as it is a Gen 2 remake, it's also packed with original content that is not appealing, with silly dialogue, some cringe as well. Instead of just Team Rocket, there is Team Saturn and Team Nexus, the latter of which dominates the Orange Islands portion of the game. In fact, most of the Orange Islands content is fucking tedious. One major nuisance with the game is that every single damn trainer uses healing items. It depends on the caliber of NPC, most of the Johto trainers would use 1 item. Gym leaders could bust out 2, an HP healing one and a Full Heal. E4 of course busts out a max/hyper potion, full restore or full heal. Boss trainers in the later portion of the game follow that. Now I regularly play hacks without using items during battles, but I quit that a few times because of not wanting to black out and fight a tedious Nexus grunt battle again. Also, for me, when I blacked out the first time in Orange Islands, I got sent all the way to Violet City, even though I used the local Pokemon Centers. Until the tail end of the game, you travel to the Orange Islands on some Undersea Express thing, that makes you wait in real time. The maximum I waited was 10 minutes, but on average you wait 7-8 minutes to go from Route 100 (it's in between Johto and Kanto, south of Route 27) to Orange Islands, and vice versa. Once you get a "Solar Rock" to power up a teleporter, you can instantly transport to Goldenrod or Leafy Bay City (Orange Islands location). Early into the Orange Islands part, you will have to progress the story by traveling back to Pallet Town after finding Professor Ivy, so there is at least one time where you have to wait in real time for a trip back to Kanto from Orange Islands.
The problem with it being a long game is that movesets and pokemon used are easily predictable. I battled the same Crawdaunt multiple times in multiple Nexus grunt battles that I know its moves. I know what kind of Tyranitar, Hariyama, Nidoking, all these other overused mons. And they wouldn't be so overused if you didn't have to battle so many Nexus grunts. There's a room that you gain access to by entering the number of Nexus grunts in one of the Orange Islands. 51, that's insane, and who would count that? This leads into some later portions of the game requiring a walkthrough because there's no clear direction on what to do. Being faithful to Crystal to a fault, the TMs are just like in Crystal, most of them aren't good by Gen 3 standards, so you better have a team that has great level up moves. There are the elemental punches and Blizzard/Thunder/Fire Blast are Game Corner prizes, but it's not enough to offset the mediocre TM list. Also, move tutors dotted around the game offer Gen 3 TMs to be taught, but can only be used once. No infinite TM usage by the way. Dragon Claw, Overheat, Calm Mind, those are ones I know for sure are tutor moves. Also, I think who can learn what is a bit off. My Sneasel could learn Dragon Claw...Latios can't. Sneasel can learn Sleep Powder, Politoed can learn Thunderbolt, some of the wacky changes are cool though.
There was an early version of LC where in the Orange Islands story where a big machine causes a hazard to an island and you have to eventually turn off various little machines to fix that hazard, the ailment was that you couldn't gain EXP. In later versions, it got changed to a very tiny and passive poisoning that didn't affect you during battles, just in the overworld. I'm saying this because it shows the game had some really bad mechanics back then. You do get underleveled without grinding, but trust me, it makes for a better challenge, these mons don't have great movesets. You probably don't either, depending on who is in your team. Fortunately my team has decent movesets. Some wish they had Gen 4+ moves, like my Breloom needs a Seed Bomb. It is frustrating though to almost KO a mon, and the damn trainer uses an HP healing item. Some mons with huge HP stats like Hariyama and Wobbuffet get healed when they are barely in the yellow, which is also annoying.
Again, being too faithful to a fault, if you know boss trainer sets in the original Crystal, they're the same here. So if you want to know what the E4 has, look up Serebii or Bulbapedia. By Gen 3 standards, those sets are not strong, the E4 thus was a breeze. Second time around, they had some Gen 3 mons thrown in and are a bit more difficult, but not really. Also, Red should be the most powerful trainer in these Gen 2 adaptations. But no, late 70s, early 80s in this one, and currently I'm battling damn Nexus grunts that are in the low 90s. Put that in perspective, a nobody grunt has higher level mons than Red.
Also, being too faithful to a fault, like Gen 2 and its remakes, you are severely underleveled later into the game. As I said earlier, you don't have to grind, if your team's really good, but if not, then the underleveled status will be bad. My team currently is in the low 80s, 10 levels below these grunts, but it's not a big deal. I have to go to the pokemon center more as I don't want to blackout, but yeah. At least with the tedious Orange Islands battles, you make a crap ton of money without the amulet coin. I made it up to 900k, and only lost money on Ultra Ball purchases as I wanted to do some legendary collection.
Lastly, I had a rocky start to the game, making me fear it would be grindy or overly difficult, but by the time I made it to Goldenrod, it was mostly smooth sailing.
Anyway, that's about it, I'll give a tl:dr.
Tl:dr - when it's just a Johto and Kanto adventure, the game is mostly good. Amazing music all throughout the game, and the overworld design is pretty. Things tail off with the original content thrown in, especially the game's attempt at extending the Kanto campaign with OC stuff that started to get tedious. Orange Islands though, the tediousness reached absurd levels and you were basically wasting PP and gaining some EXP rather than having provocative battles. Every trainer uses healing items which slows the game down and contributes to the tedious aspect of the game. Poor TM distribution, and learnsets are mostly unchanged from Gen 2 and 3 (which sucked especially hard for Shroomish, having to wait until level 54 for it to learn Spore). It's overrated in my opinion, but not completely terrible. I'm still playing it, if it was total garbage, I'd give up. I'd recommend just to try, but I wouldn't put this in a top 10 or even top 20 of ROMhacks. 7/10
for such an extensive write up, how do you not mention that the orange island arc is not even close to being finished and randomly freezes after the first island?
what 20 rom hacks wouLd you list above liquid crystal? I'm not a liquid crystal fan and I've played a fair share of rom hacks but I'd struggle to name 20 decent, complete hacks (that's even including the numerous enhancement hacks out there)
I haven't gotten random freezes, and the unfinished nature of Orange Islands simply didn't come to mind. The last few days I've been dwelling on the negatives of the game, as you can tell by me highlighting them more than the positives. I did hit a dead end in the Old Warehouse where a battle starts and it's against a level 0 circle with a question mark in the middle. Knocking it out resets the game, so I believe that concludes the game (side things I'll check out before finally putting this to bed).
For 2019, I've kept a list of ROMHacks I've played, so I can name 20 that I've played in 2019. Before that, I probably played at most 10. 46 ROMHacks in 2019, 1 fangame in Infinite Fusion. So in no particular order.
Renegade Platinum
Fire Red Omega
Storm Silver and Sacred Gold
Blazed Glazed
XG: NeXt Generation
Rising Ruby
Yet Another Fire Red Hack
Blaze Black
Blaze Black 2
Dark Violet
Clover
Kanto Black
Nameless Fire Red
Emerald Genesis
Pyrite
Kanlara Ultimate
Polka Aqua
Ruby++
Gaia (Randomized)
Emerald Kaizo
Gaia
Adventures Red Chapter
Glazed
Prism
Vega
Clover
Renegade Platinum
Blaze Black/Volt White
Sacred Gold/Storm Silver
Theta Emerald
Nameless Fire Red
Crystal Clear
Procyon/Deneb
Snakewood
Light Platinum
Flora Sky
Cloud White
Ruby Destiny 2
Moon Emerald
Fire Red Omega
All games I’d play over Liquid Crystal. Seriously, the Potion thing fucking sucks. Either play Crystal or HGSS.
about being too faithful to a fault, there's also the fact that despite some gorgeous graphics, there are some areas where they literally reuse the original gsc sprites (olivine lighthouse comes to mind) and it does not look good when paired with the updated npc and player sprites
That was an interesting read. I've never played the game myself, I'm blaming you for shying me away from it.
What's your top 5 rom hacks? And favorite GBA rom hack?
Comment deleted by user
Oh no, that's not my field. Quite frankly, I'm not fussed with it being finished. What it had at the tail end was a mediocre storyline with this "Team Nexus." It would probably the same old stuff I complained about in my previous comment. And after playing the recently updated hack Orange Islands, I can say that the Orange Islands look was never as good as it was in this newer hack. It actually makes me think that this game should not have had a day/night cycle, because the always bright and vibrant overworld on the Orange Islands hack is lovely to see, a night shift would compromise that.
I don't know
Upvoted for honesty
Lmao
Out of the ROMs I've played, it's a top tier contender for sure. I'd give it a rough 8/10
The new story is pretty cringe tbh but still a fun game to a point.
The game as a remake is pretty faithful. I played it twice and I've enjoyed it both times. Do be aware that there is a few custom trainer battles but they are no way invasive.
It's OK, a bit glitchy and getting Thunder before gym 1 is pretty broken, but it's pretty good imo
I definitely liked it back when I played through it and I would recommend it.
Its good but if you had the chance to get Heart Gold/Soul Silver at a decent enough price, go for that instead. Personally i cant really get into rom hacks much as i prefer playing pokemon on gameboy or ds
You can play romhacks on DS. At least I do. lol.
For a Crystal remake plus some new stuff it's pretty good, in comparison to other Hacks like Blazed Glaze or Gaia it doesn't match up but for something that's a Gen 2 Remake it basically beats everything else
Crystal Dust is better.
Is it complete?
TM's arent reusable.
That automaticallly makes this a non starter for me. Which is unfortunate, because this hack has so much potential.
I'm aware that the creator had to stop working on it, due to life being in the way. So sadly, the game is both unfinished, and lacking, compared to other rom hacks.
Ia Thais game stilo being made?
I believe it's mount silver. I haven't gotten that far but there have been screenshots posted of that area in the discord.
Have you got a link to it? Sounds very good