Pokemon: Kanto Black

Hello everyone. I recently played the Pokemon Kanto Black Rom Hack and would like to give my quick thoughts on it.

 

Pokemon Kanto Black is a rom hack of Pokemon FireRed. The main feature of this rom hack is that it's Kanto from FireRed but all of the Gen 1 Pokemon have been replaced with Gen 5 mons instead. Plus some Gen 6 mons in addition to a lot of quality of life and other interesting features.

So this novelty of Gen 5 and 6 pokemon in Kanto does shake up the experience significantly as there are both new ways to tackle some challenges and also new challenges to face. For example, the first gym leader, Brock, is now easily doable with any of the 3 starters since the fire starter: Tepig, evolves into a fire/fighting mon. It also goes the other way as many enemy trainers have much more powerful teams and combinations that take advantage of both Gen 5/6 mechanics and Pokemon. For example, Giovanni has a strudy Petaya Berry Bisharp with Sucker Punch, Swords Dance and Iron Head which can really catch you by surprise. It was able to one shot my overlevelled Dragon Dance Tyrantrum easily which I thought would destroy his entire team. As a result, it was really fun teambuilding and deciding which new strats and Pokemon to use for what I assumed to be familiar challenges only to have some pretty surprising responses from enemy trainers. 

In addition, the hack makes quite an effort to try and integrate these new Pokemon in ways that feel natural to the story and setting. For example, instead of Snorlax sleeping and blocking off routes, it's Musharna. Instead of Mewtwo being the Pokemon created by science, it's Genesect. Instead of Diglett Cave, you have Drillbur cave. And these add so much so the world that at it almost feels like it was made for these Pokemon initially. There are also other changes like Blaine being a Normal Type Gym Leader, Loreili specializing in Water rather than Ice, Agatha specializing in Fire etc. There is one case where I was expecting things to be changed but weren't. In FireRed, we learn that in Saffron City, there was originally a fighting type Gym. When Sabrina came, she opened her Psychic Gym. As the town was supposed to have only 1 gym, the 2 gyms fought to see who'd get to be the official Gym. And obviously Kanto Psychic types beat the Fighting Types. There's no Dark types or even good Dark moves they could have used so they never stood a chance. But in Kanto Black, there are Pokemon like Scrafty and Pangoro which are Dark/Fighting types which are immune to Psychic type moves. They also have moves like Crunch and Sucker Punch as well as competitve items. I'm surprised this wasn't brought up in Kanto Black with a "well actually, the Fighting Type Gym beat the Psychic gym because Sabrina thought her team of fast but frail Psychic types would easily win but lost to the Fighting Type Gym that had ways of countering that". Seems like a missed opportunity there.

In addition, there's quite a few more changes from base FireRed. You have the usual expected features from Rom hacks like reusable TMs, the physical/special split, the fairy type and its moves. But you also have some other cool stuff. For one, the Sevii Islands, the postgame content for the original FireRed, is now mostly accessible once you beat the 4th gym in Kanto Black. And these islands contain a lot of Gen 6 Pokemon you can't obtain in Kanto (which mostly houses Gen 5 mons) as well as allowing access to a good chunk of postgame story you can do right there. You have lots of items from later gens present like the Choice Scarf and Specs, Weakness Policy and Life Orb. And also items like Seeds which can help increase a Pokemon's IVs by a couple points. You have an entirely new island housing a Battle Facility for Rental Battles and 3v3 Battles in a Battle Tower which award both BP and Money. I love this aspect because it means instead of going out and having to do stuff like farm for heart scales/shards/berries or breed the perfect Pokemon, I can just do Rental Pokemon Battles to build up the currencies to do that faster in a more fun way.

This island also contains a new Trick House with what seems to be entirely new puzzles I've never seen before in a Pokemon game. And they can get quite intense, mixing ideas and requiring a fair amount of thought (some of the later ones do drag though).

In addition, the other battle facility, Rush Tower, has been updated with battles against gym leaders. There's an island that gives you random eggs for rare Pokemon allowing for more variety.

Like, all these alone made it a very fun Rom Hack to play through and strategize through. I'd love to one day even come back and try a nuzelocke of this game in the future once it's out of beta and polished up more. I recommend it that much.

But I do have some significant criticisms. As this game is in beta, I hope they can be addressed at some point.

Firstly, the game is quite buggy in places. Moves like Moonblast softlock the game which can make it difficult to progress. For example, there's a Team Rocket Admin who uses a sturdy Carbink with moonblast. This Pokemon always uses Moonblast for whatever reason. Even against my Excadrill who resists the move. And since it has sturdy, it cannot be knocked out in 1 hit meaning it can always get off a moonblast and soft lock the game. I ended up getting through it by switching to my Greninja and using save states to spam Dark Pulse until I got a run where it flinched several times in a row so I could then finish it off with a torrent boosted surf. As a result, I often ended up really getting afraid whenever I ran into a fairy type. Other stuff like the new postgame Battle facility doesn't seem to have the Boss Trainers spawn.

Secondly, the EXP share works like it did in Gen 5 rather than Gen 6 and onwards. Meaning you cannot level up your entire team per battle. I played the game on Challenge Mode which meant I only had 1-3 Pokemon at a reasonable level at a time while the others really lagged behind even wild Pokemon. Had to spend a fair bit of time grinding as a result. There are also doesn't seem to be Gen 5's "proportional EXP system" to help level up faster. Which does kill the pacing at times. I often found myself replacing team members by finding stronger versions in the wild. In one case, I swapped my level 13 Adamant Drillbur for a level 30 modest one just because I didn't want to grind.

Thirdly, the game doesn't seem to have unlimited item storage, either on your bag or in the PC. This wasn't that much of an issue in base FireRed because there weren't that many interesting items. But since Kanto Black has a lot of competitive items and medicines from later games present, I found my PC Item storage filling up quite fast. I had to resort to placing many of my individual items as Held Items onto Pokemon in storage. Other Rom Hacks don't have this issue and have implemented larger bag sizes or at the very least, a larger PC Item size.