I quit shortly after beating maylene in veilstone
things I liked:
interesting new typings and movesets overall, especially for regional forms
sinnohan togepi and mareep sprites though both kinda felt more fitting for unova and alola, respectively
excellent added lore which improves on the vanilla text by a lot. the improved writing was the highlight of the romhack for me.
really like no EVs
evolutions like happiness, stones, item-based are all much more reasonable compared to vanilla
nice QoL features including: (virtually) unlimited TMs
bike at start
anti-stall (e.g. 2pp iron defence)
anti-sweep (e.g. 1pp dragon dance)
things I disliked:
no substantial anti-grind outside of the chansey trainer
IVs/natures still matter
a few other users have already mentioned this, but most battles still feel like OHKO or get OHKO'd unless the other trainer stalls; was punished often and heavily for defensive switch-ins on my blind playthrough
lack of included speedup patch available to other platinum hacks like renegade and redux (don't know if it even works for this; I didn't think of trying this sooner)
anti-stall and anti-sweep hurts the player too; felt like these moves and battles in general were balanced around a portable pokecenter item like pokevial for pp recovery and even healing from fainted
basically have to rely on documentation if not over-leveling significantly and want to avoid fainting/wipes
subjective, but most regional form sprites (apart from togepi and mareep) looked pretty bad; especially flames and clouds which don't match vanilla sprites
would've liked some more QoL like lower encounter rates + higher wild battle exp or trainer battle exp
meme references (e.g. a deep rock galactic reference somewhere)
I quit shortly after beating maylene in veilstone things I liked: interesting new typings and movesets overall, especially for regional forms sinnohan togepi and mareep sprites though both kinda felt more fitting for unova and alola, respectively excellent added lore which improves on the vanilla text by a lot. the improved writing was the highlight of the romhack for me. really like no EVs evolutions like happiness, stones, item-based are all much more reasonable compared to vanilla nice QoL features including: (virtually) unlimited TMs bike at start anti-stall (e.g. 2pp iron defence) anti-sweep (e.g. 1pp dragon dance) things I disliked: no substantial anti-grind outside of the chansey trainer IVs/natures still matter a few other users have already mentioned this, but most battles still feel like OHKO or get OHKO'd unless the other trainer stalls; was punished often and heavily for defensive switch-ins on my blind playthrough lack of included speedup patch available to other platinum hacks like renegade and redux (don't know if it even works for this; I didn't think of trying this sooner) anti-stall and anti-sweep hurts the player too; felt like these moves and battles in general were balanced around a portable pokecenter item like pokevial for pp recovery and even healing from fainted basically have to rely on documentation if not over-leveling significantly and want to avoid fainting/wipes subjective, but most regional form sprites (apart from togepi and mareep) looked pretty bad; especially flames and clouds which don't match vanilla sprites would've liked some more QoL like lower encounter rates + higher wild battle exp or trainer battle exp meme references (e.g. a deep rock galactic reference somewhere)