Anyways if you read through all of this somehow, thanks. I just really wanted to get this out there on the internet, maybe I'm wrong on some things idfk. But I am just so tired of seeing the same old hackslop pushed out that gets endless praise even though they have big problems. Have a good one.

"But these things take a lot of times and are free!!!"

Doesn't matter, if you can't put in the effort to include even the most BASIC of things or fix blatant issues with games (like firered's godawful pitched up OST) then you shouldn't even bother to begin with.

CONCLUSION (I guess...?)

Romhackers need to strive to do better and actually make something with QUALITY over QUANTITY. That goes for fangames/custom region hacks as they usually just have edgy as hell stories that somehow get praise.

Honestly the fact people who make QoL hacks or definitive edition hacks completely miss the point of respecting the player's time and providing tools for making things more streamlined so you can focus on making a great team. Most of the time you're just not experimenting with new mons cause of it.

- No infinite TMs

A feature introduced in generation 5, most rom hacks don't seem to implement it from what I've seen. The only argument I could see was "It breaks muh balancing" my brother in christ, make the trainers compensate for it. Or have more powerful TMs rewards for exploring the map.

Like gen 2 and gen 3 are an absolute SLOG to get through. Most people bitch about the "Level curve" in gen 2 especially and that wouldn't be a problem if you had some dedicated spots in each area to fight blisseys and chanseys to raise up some pokemon and shake up. The pokegear/nav suck for grinding

PART 2: NOT doing the most BASIC of QoL or Accessibility.

It's no surprise most of these dime-a-dozen hacks don't fix the problems with older gens.

- Grinding is a chore, most of these hacks don't have a dedicated area to grind up new pokemon, making trying to raise a new party member a chore.

The amount of youtuber videos I see that are like "I FIXED THIS POKEMON GAME" or "THIS HACK IS THE DEFINITIVE WAY TO EXPERIENCE THIS CLASSIC POKEMON GAME" is annoying as hell. Anyways lemme get into part 2 now.

I feel like I shouldn't have to say this but most rom hacking sites (mostly r/PokemonrROMhacks and Pokecommunity) is usually dominated by these and they all just fall into the same template time and time again. My only conclusion is people keep making them so some youtube gives a boost for their ego

PART 1: Lack of Originality, most hacks follow this

Most hacks out there follow this format:

- QoL Hack: (Most of the time doesn't implement even the most BASIC of QoL features, more on that later)

- Difficulty Hack: What if Pokemon beat you up, spit on your face, and took your money