Emerald hack: Pokémon Emerald Horizons - Emerald Difficulty Hack [Complete, v1.11f ft. New Rocket Storyline, Boss Gauntlet, Gen 1-8, Side Quests, and QoL features]

[pokegamer2000]

Difficulty enhancement? You can't even enjoy the game because it's so hard. Just fyi, first time playing this rom, I chose mudkip, A "WATER TYPE" i leveled up all the way to level cap and i also caught a budew a "GRASS TYPE", and yet i still couldn't beat the 1st gym which is rock type. Ngl, this game is not for casual players. i never understood why people like hard games, but this game is the most hardest rom hack i ever seen. actually it's most the difficult pokemon game i ever seen and that's saying a lot cuz i hate the hard gens before gen 6 mechanics but i still manage to beat them. Also and it's not like you can make it easier on yourself and cheat your Way through because most if not all cheats don't work in this game.

 

[Neosonic97]

There's "difficulty enhancement", and then there's Kaizo-level hacks, and this game is absolutely the latter. If Radical Red is a 10 on the difficulty scale, then this game is a 15. Outside of Hardcore Mode (which is deliberately designed to be a Kaizo-level experience), even Radical Red isn't as ABSOLUTELY MERCILESS as this game. This game is much, much harder than Rad. Red.

 

[toxicrqph]

https://i.imgur.io/b9U8NlL_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

Beat the Elite 4 and champion for the first time using this team. No Legendaries used throughout the play through which I take pride in.

Also gotta mention personally for me this was one of the best gba rom hacks I have ever played, I'd choose this over radical red or inclement emerald any day and I have played both. Loved the difficulty too even though it seems people think it's too hard. The Pokémon available to me too was a huge plus, the fact you got 8 generations of Pokémon available to catch before the post game is crazy to me and made the Emerald experience much more fresh even without story changes. Good job on the hack

 

[Xhizors9]

are there any nervs or buffs to the pokemons or do they have original stats and lernsets?

and how das does the dexnav work for the hidden pokemons?

 

[DerpyKira]

I'm going to give this a try, it looks promising. I looked at the docs, no file for the stat changes made to some pokemons yet?

 

[BrandonXL]

https://i.imgur.io/b9U8NlL_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium

Beat the Elite 4 and champion for the first time using this team. No Legendaries used throughout the play through which I take pride in.

Also gotta mention personally for me this was one of the best gba rom hacks I have ever played, I'd choose this over radical red or inclement emerald any day and I have played both. Loved the difficulty too even though it seems people think it's too hard. The Pokémon available to me too was a huge plus, the fact you got 8 generations of Pokémon available to catch before the post game is crazy to me and made the Emerald experience much more fresh even without story changes. Good job on the hack

Thank you so much for the kind, kind words and welcome to the Hall of Fame! Sorry about the Crobat thing; version 1.01 will be on the way out soon to amend that issue, so you discovering that was super important.
I'm really glad you enjoyed it, and it genuinely means so much that you beat the game! I put a lot of time and effort into it, so you taking your time to play it is great.
Part of what I wanted to see was how different/unique final teams can be while still being able to clear the difficult endgame; as you can see, your team looks quite different from a lot of people, so that's really cool to see.
Again, thanks so much for playing :)

are there any nervs or buffs to the pokemons or do they have original stats and lernsets?

and how das does the dexnav work for the hidden pokemons?

The stats are vanilla; I'll upload the learnsets once v1.01 is ready. Generally speaking, they're vanilla + certain viable egg moves/tutor moves, but I did "nerf" certain troublesome mons (i.e., Cloyster gets Shell Smash later because it's pretty strong in an EVless/IVless game.
There isn't a hidden mon field just yet; currently, you just have your 12 land/5 fishing/5 surf encounters. Hidden mons could come at a later time, but I've covered all bases on the mons I want to be accessible in this current iteration.

I'm going to give this a try, it looks promising. I looked at the docs, no file for the stat changes made to some pokemons yet?

Yeah, no stat changes to mons. There may be a few minor alterations to movesets, but nothing major. Hope you enjoy your playthrough!

 

[toxicrqph]

No problem and the Crobat thing actually helped me realize that flying gem acrobatics was much better anyway but glad to help anyway I can.

 

[RenElite]

For a so called enhancement hack, this one has the worse dexnav of all enhancement hacks. Literally dexnaving in a cave is hell, and requires a repel just so you can get the encounter that you want. Add in the tip toe mechanic from ORAS that the game doesnt even tell you to on how to do (I only knew it due to someone knowledgeable enough in Decomp Dexnav) and you get one hell of a slow ass time just to get an encounter. Not to mention the tip toe mechanic adds to the chance of encountering wild mons, which is nothing but annoying. Grinding level is also bad early game, and other enhancement hacks doesnt even have grinding problems early on. You can't even turn off exp share to manage team levels easier, and since the game has important trainers always on you high leveled mon, this make lower level mon useless. Idk, for an enhancement hack, this is an insult to hacks that had much better qol. Could've been great but so many questionable game designs plague this.

 

[Xhizors9]

is there a map in the game other than the one in ur bedroom?

 

[BrandonXL]

is there a map in the game other than the one in ur bedroom?

Presently, the map can be accessed in Poke Centers or when using Fly. Depending on how far you are, you may have noticed that there are additional menu items. Due to these additions, I disabled the PokeNav option (which had a town map), primarily because the omission of rematches means most people aren't going to be using it. I originally planned on keeping said option with a two-page menu, but I think there is a minor bug related to exiting the two-page menu.

 

[decarabia12]

I am more of the "catch 'em all" type of player so I really enjoyed this game since basically I can catch any mons without worrying about the nature and IV. I also not a huge fans of EV training since, well, I don't really like to grind a specific scenario so this is quite fitting for me. Maybe we need more space in PC since I think considering the number of mons available, the PC will not be enough.
However, this is still difficult game, but for now it is still manageable. I just finished slateport, so I might be wrong since 3rd gym might be brutal. What I did in the first 2 gym was, bring 3 main pokemon and 3 underleveled mons so the level will be balanced (I think it works on gym leader). I like unbound since the story is really good, I can play the "catch 'em all" style and while it is difficult, it is still okay. I hope in the end, this hack will leave such good impression on me as well.

Ah also, implementing HM method such as in unbound might be nice. So HM can still be used if the mons can learn it without actually needing to learn it. It will help tremendously.

 

[LetMeDownloadTheGames]

Honestly a pretty cool game. The amount of content and quality of life changes are crazy. It was incredibly annoying at times since a lot of the difficulty comes from the enemies having impossible moves instead of their real moves, and no tms early on to even the playing field. So it forces you to play a certain way instead of just being able to do whatever you want. Overall though it's nice and super challenging.

 

[Lolto777]

help how do i get past the petalburg forest aqua grunt 😭
sorry if this has been asked before, i tried looking for a shroomish in the forest but i'm 99% sure they don't spawn there anymore

 

[Corveone]

help how do i get past the petalburg forest aqua grunt 😭
sorry if this has been asked before, i tried looking for a shroomish in the forest but i'm 99% sure they don't spawn there anymore

Shroomish can be found in Route 102. Don't count on it helping much against that grunt though, unless you get lucky with Effect Spore or something, since both Poochyena and Carvanha have Ice Fang and will outspeed it (Carvanha also has Poison Fang)

 

[pokegamer2000]

how does anyone beat this game? the first gym is literally impossible to beat even with type advantage. what the hell. i took it on like 5 times, gotten closer but still lost every single time. wth are you supposed to do? it's so hard to train new team members. Update: Finally beat the gym, Ngl it doesn't feel good at all, it just feels like i just passed a test to find more harder tests in store for me. i don't understand why people like hard games because of that. it's stressful, yea, stressful in a game that's originally a kid's game. Pokemon is easy, which is why it's fun, if i can't win, i don't bother playing

 

[Neosonic97]

Shroomish can be found in Route 102. Don't count on it helping much against that grunt though, unless you get lucky with Effect Spore or something, since both Poochyena and Carvanha have Ice Fang and will outspeed it (Carvanha also has Poison Fang)

The real thing that helps you against that is if you get a Silver Wind Yanma on Route 104.

...Not that anything can help you get past Roxanne or the Rusturf Aqua Grunt, though.

This game is Emerald Kaizo-tier hard.

 

[goldensunmasterrpg]

so ill start this by saying this hack has a lot going for it i like being able to use a lot of different pokemon and with so many options on each route it gives playthroughs a lot of variety, however....... i agree with what a lot of people have been complaining about with the difficulty, because EV's, IV's, and Natures don't do anything to affect stats it makes a lot of pokemon useless or obsolete you have to use specific pokemon for each fight and have to plan out fights very carefully and if your pokemon miss or gets crit its almost impossible to recover which results in a reset, and to some that might seem fun but to others its just tedious the victory's don't feel fun, if i could express how it felt to beat the first two gym leaders i would say if felt like i was on a long flight i just wanted it to end already when i beat them i didn't feel like i won i felt like i just scraped by on luck. i really want to enjoy this but in its current state i just cant, i am unable to use pokemon i like and fights are just to tedious to do with the whole game revolving around the mon you use and the item you equip to them the gameplay seems kinda stale. if you want my honest opinion you should add an option to allow EV And IV And Natures to work for the more casual players so more strategy can be put into the game or you could add an option so people can use items in battle if the fight is to hard for them, these are just some of my opinions im not telling you to do any of this but it would make the game a lot more enjoyable.

 

[BrandonXL]

Hi all,
Thanks for everyone who has taken the time to play the game thus far. I haven't been responding to posts in anticipation of update 1.01, which is hopefully set to roll out sometime in the next week or two. It'll come with a set of bug fixes (some considerably major), a level cap window for reference (see the below image), Red+Blue Orb obtention, and an expansion of the post-game Boss Battles gauntlet (from 24 battles to 30 total battles). I'll post a full list of changes once that comes out.

Most of the recent comments have been related to the game's difficulty. While the game sought to modernize the Emerald experience, the intention of this project was always to make a difficulty hack. I believe it might've been misinterpreted as something else due to the "6/10" difficulty rating I noted in the master post; that was merely my assessment of how hard I thought it was, but never a target number for how hard I wanted the game to be. Truth be told, I wanted the game to get as close to a Kaizo- or RR-type game in terms of difficulty. This game's playstyle is quite nuanced due to the lack of EVs, IVs, and natures and is certainly not everyone's cup of tea.

I am grateful for all the feedback (both positive and negative) and appreciate everyone for giving it a try! Do I personally think it's insanely difficult? No, but I designed the game and know what to expect, so it's not particularly an objective assessment. Do I think that certain people will have the perception that the game is too hard? Absolutely, and that's well within your right. I've taken a lot of feedback into consideration, some of which will be incorporated into 1.01; I'm certainly excited to share the new update with the community! However, the identity of this game at its inception was to be a difficulty hack, and I want to maintain that moving forward. Thanks all thus far! It's a real blessing that people in this community have given the game a shot, and I hope to receive some more Hall of Fame submissions in the future :)

 

[Xhizors9]

would love a option for hms dont need to be taught for use and more number of usage for the pokeviale (i just finished the 7th gym so maybe there is already an option for that later that i dont know).

 

[Voidlings]

I want to note that even though RR is a very hard romhack, it "recently" introduced the possibility starting a new game to choose the "Easy" mode that its way more managable even to players that just want to enjoy the romhack for what it have to offer without being stuck for days on each gym leader or feel frustrated while playing it

I gave up on Pokemon Horizons almost halfway on the playthrough because i really didn't liked how hard it was. I suppose i could still try harder and manage to win and continue but... it wasn't my thing. Still i loved all the offered QOL and improvement made by this hack (in my opinion the DexNav is perfect as it is) and i plan to play more of it in the future, hoping a more "soft" difficulty will be released by that time