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Pokémon Emerald Horizons v1.09
Introduction
If you want to skip me pouring my heart out, you can go to the Features section followed by the Documentation and Patch section.
Pokémon has always been at the forefront of my hobbies. When I was younger, I loved crafting teams for different Gym Leaders, Elite Four members, and really any Trainer that could be designated as a "boss battle." The idea of creating a game of my own was never really a thing until I played games like Pokémon Unbound (skeli, ghoul), Radical Red (soupercell), and Inclement Emerald (Buffel Saft). These hacks are among what I consider the best Pokémon experiences. My love for these games centers around a few commonalities: these games all feature a diversity in Pokémon you can obtain, these games are all on a sophisticated, modern battle engine, and - most importantly - they all offer a considerable degree of challenge, further showcased in their brilliant boss battles. The concept of "boss battles" never really stopped appealing to me, and I knew that after playing these games that I wanted to create my own game as well. Given the vast amount of resources selflessly created by this community (in particular, RHH, DizzyEgg, and PRET), I set out to create a game with a few key principles in mind:
- Difficult, but fair. On a scale of 1-10, with vanilla being a 1 and Radical Red being a 10, I would say this game sits at a 6.
- Feature alignment with modern entries in the series
- Streamlining the player experience
The project was designed so that the player can quickly achieve what they want to do from a teambuilding perspective while still holding them accountable with an enhanced difficulty.
While the game adds a considerable amount of new features, the game's primary identity is a difficulty hack.
To be frank, I wanted to make the type of Hoenn experience that I would be satisfied playing. While the game mostly follows the vanilla Emerald storyline, you'll find new Trainers to battle and new things to do!
In consideration of the above, I am proud to share with the community Emerald Horizons, my Emerald difficulty hack.
Features
Many of the features below are either inherent in the RHH's pokeemerald-expansion branch or possible due to the tireless work of the contributors in the Simple Modifications Directory (credited at the bottom of the post)!
The key features of this game include:
- Difficulty Related: Set Mode, Level Caps, and Disabled Battle Bag
- Most Gen 1-8 Pokémon are obtainable, including Hisuian forms
- Modern Battle Engine, with Fairy-Type, Mega Evolution, Updated Moves, and Physical/Special Split
- Loads of optional boss battles, with 8 Kanto Gym Leaders, 8 Johto Gym Leaders, and a few miscellaneous bosses who reward valuable items
- Exp. All
- Bosses and mid/late game Trainers scale to or relative to your strength, so grinding/overleveling isn't a factor
- Updated move animations, courtesy of Skeli and ghoulslash
- No EVs/IVs/Natures factored into stats
- 80 TMs, with about 50% vanilla TMs and 50% custom TMs
- Ghoulslash's DexNav (12 unique land/5 unique surf/5 unique fishing encounters); hold A to creep!
- PSF's Quest Menu UI, with 41 Side Quests to Complete
- Buffel's Poké Vial implementation
- Ghoul's Item Description Headers
- Badge-Based Poké Marts
- HMs don't need to be taught
- Original Team Rocket storyline!
- Level Cap Window updates as you progress
- No more annoying fishing minigame
- BW Repel System
- Unlimited use TMs/Forgettable HMs
- Nicknaming and Move Relearning in Party Screen
- Decapitalization
- Slateport City Level Grinder to quickly hit Level Cap
- Linking Cord for most trade related evolutions
- Post-Game Boss Rush Mode
- 2.5x Lucky Egg
- Premier Ball Bonuses
- No poison damage in the overworld
Level Caps, as with most games, are tied to badges. You can see the Level Cap in game by pressing Start, but they're below for reference:
Spoiler:
As noted above, while most Gen 1-8 Pokémon are obtainable, certain species can not be caught in the game. This primarily pertains to Legendary/Mythical Pokémon. The list of currently unobtainable Pokémon is below.
Spoiler:
Screenshots
Documentation and Patch
I've created a repository to access both documentation related to the game and the patch itself.
Documentation consists of an encounter sheet for all locations, the evolution.h file, and an item guide.
I am a strong advocate for playing the game blind, but they are available for those who are searching for a particular thing.
As for trainer documentation, I do not currently have any intention to create anything of that nature. I think part of the challenge is not knowing what to expect.
However, if upon feedback there is a desire for such a thing, it may happen in the future.
You can access the folder and download the patch HERE.
I use Floating IPS to patch, but any patcher should do the trick just fine. You'll also need to have an 1986 - Pokémon Emerald (Trashman) ROM.
Hall of Fame
Below are the final teams that cleared the Elite Four from the community!
I hope to continue populate this more with runs completed by community members (seriously, send your teams)!
Runs:
Additional Hall of Fame Entries
Spoiler:
Run statistics can be found here.
Before You Ask
- Hidden Abilities are obtained either via DexNav or using an Ability Patch, which comes after a certain amount of badges
- While you'll see a Nature in the Summary Screen, I promise you it is not calculated into your overall stats!
- Some movesets have been adjusted accordingly. For example, Tyranitar can relearn Dragon Dance. This is to avoid the need to grind out egg moves.
- As a caveat to the above, it is important to note that not all egg moves were added to learnsets.
- Certain Pokémon received "buffs" or "nerfs" in their movesets/learnsets, but nothing major has been changed.
- If you don't know how to evolve it, chances are you just need a Linking Cord.
- To Mega Evolve, hit the Start button before selecting a move.
- There is no way to turn off Exp. All, as this ensures your team scales in accordance with the game's difficulty.
Credits
(If I missed anyone, please let me know immediately)!
PRET - pokeemerald
DizzyEgg - Battle Engine, Pokémon Expansion
RHH - pokeemerald-expansion
ghoulslash - DexNav, Item Description Headers, Move Animations, contributing to original Quest Menu
StargazaART - Title Screen and Diantha Trainer! Seriously, check their Twitter! Fantastic work and person to work with.
skeli - Move Animations, contributing to original Quest Menu
PSF - Quest Menu
RavePossum & BSBob - Map Popups
Spherical Ice - Ruins of Alph Puzzles
TheXaman - Debug menu for incredibly fast testing
Lunos - Exp. All
PokemonCrazy - Type Effectiveness in Battle
Buffel Saft - Poké Vial
Clara-Dragon - Original Ultra Wormhole Sprite
Poffin Case and Kyle Dove - Leon Trainer Sprite
kumquat - Alder RSE composition
Wobb and Aveontrainer - Cynthia Overworld
TravisComm - Maxie Back Sprite
Kaneblaise - Cynthia Trainer Sprite
Christopher "Nova" Foss - Miror B. Midi Arrangement
Aveontrainer - Gen 2 Gym Leaders and HGSS Team Rocket sprites, and NUMEROUS OWs.
Contributors of Simple Modifications Directory/pokeemerald Tutorials, including AsparagusEduardo, HunarPG, Lunos, Tyler Scarff, and more - Numerous QOL features
The kind RHH community - AsparagusEduardo, Salem, Lunos, DizzyEgg, SBird, Archie, MGriffin, shinydragonhunter, Grunt Lucas, and anyone else I've had to bother for help
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