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Fire Red Omega

July 30, 2022

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Get all 386 gen 3 Pokemon in Fire Red, but with Smoochum, Elekid, and Magby as your starters. Also features a difficulty increase that can be a bit much in the early game.
  • The different starters are interesting, featuring three Pokemon I don't typically use since they're typically only found late in the game.
  • Increased difficulty too over the top in early areas, Brock's got a full team of 6 higher level Pokemon before you can afford potions.
  • Awkward ways of providing prior starters and other event Pokemon, feels like every NPC early in the game is just handing out a pile of gift Pokemon.
2.5/5 Stars

Summary

A catch 'em all hack of Fire Red that lets you get all 386 gen 3 Pokemon, but with the slight twist of the starters are Smoochum, Elekid & Magby. There is also a general difficulty increase including full teams for all gyms. This is the first ROM Hack by Drayano who made some very popular ROM hacks known for being catch 'em all hacks with some slight difficulty increases. There are also some new areas and events.

Major Features

  •  The starters are now Smoochum, Elekid & Magby.
  • All pokemon up to gen 3 are added to the game and spread throughout.
  • Difficulty increase with full teams for gym leaders as well as moveset changes for trainer pokemon.
  • Extra patches of grass added to some towns for new pokemon locations
  • Old rod doesn't just catch magikarp
  • The National Dex is obtained as soon as you get the PokeDex.
  • Some new areas have been added - these are called Chronum Tower, Ancient Labyrinth and Yggdrasill Forest. These are not accessible until the end of the game.
  • Evolution changes for various pokemon

Review

First of Drayano's hacks I've played. This one is his first and it shows. The difficulty changes are very clunky with Brock having a full higher-level team before you can really afford any potions. I cheated the in-game store prices to 1$ for everything in order to help get through that and some other difficulty walls. Once you get past the Brock wall, the challenge is mostly around you being surprised that the weezing has fire blast or other surprise move changes.

It is a catch 'em all type hack if you ignore the accidental exclusion of the other starters from the wild. The hack includes all gen 3 pokemon, introducing national dex mon from the beginning and swaps the starters to magby, smoochum and elekid. This meant I got to play fire red through with a team I woudln't normally have or use, but also the sheer number of pokemon felt a bit off, mostly with the gift pokemon.

You cannot shake a stick in the first three areas of the game without hitting someone willing to just give you a starter as you have all 9 starters up to gen 3 just being handed out like candy. This makes it feel a bit overwhelming as nearly every new NPC you're talking to is just giving you a one-off pokemon for no reason.

It's an okay time, I enjoyed playing through with pokemon I've literally never used like a boosted Jynx, but other changes like Hyper Beam no longer requiring recharge and a few others felt random and confusing.