I, however, decided to forego the large tongued hellspawn. For example: Lickitongue is one of the first Pokémon you can catch after you get your Pokéballs from May after you make her adorable little Treecko/Torchic/Mudkip eat dirt. This game gives you access to every Pokémon up to Hoenn.
The more prominent differences come in the form of the aforementioned route changes and the inclusion of all the Pokémon. Ultimately however: if you've ever played Pokémon Emerald, then you'll have experienced this ROM hack's story. There are.minor differences event wise, but I was playing with the emulator's acceleration mode on, so I admittedly didn't pay too much attention if there were any key differences. You go on your Pokémon adventure, Team Aqua and Team Magma are at each other's throats because of their insatiable desire to awaken legendary Pokémon, and Mr. Story wise, the game's a mirroring of Emerald. It helps that the physical/special split was out into this game. While I find the difficulty curve a bit steep at times (I'm looking at you, Tate and Liza), it's more or less fair and entertaining. In the case of Altered Emerald, it's different. While Shiny Gold is a game that I quite enjoy, the curve in its “harder” counterpart is less difficult and more “let's just make the Pokémon higher leveled and give them more obscene movesets to give the illusion of difficulty”. I've read that many Pokémon ROM hacks fall victim to having obscene difficulty curves and that's very evident with games like Pokémon Shiny Gold Sigma. However, countering my dream to recreate The Lion King with Scar as the winner was the game's difficulty curve. I found this out by capturing a Poochyena and using it to bite and crunch my way to victory whenever anything that wasn't a fighting type Pokémon entered the field. The game ups the levels of most of the trainers and buffs certain Pokémon so they can be usable, if not more usable. Take Hoenn, throw in all the Pokémon from Kanto, Johto, and Hoenn (and more!), make quality of life changes, and redo some of the routes as to make the game feel different, yet the same.Īltered Emerald is something I found myself having way more fun playing than I expected. Anyways, Altered Emerald finds its footing from its premise alone.
My experience with this series began with Hoenn and ironically ended with it too. Formerly known as Pokémon Emerald 2, Altered Emerald is a fully redone version of one of my favorite Pokémon games: the titular Emerald.