RIP GBAHacks, the best index for Pokemon ROMhacks. And yeah, host of pre-patched hacks. Run by a helpful, responsive, and nice person, Knuckle-San. I wanted to give my condolences, I haven’t done that in this space.
Altered Emerald was one of the first Gen 3 hacks I played, way back in 2018. In 2020, I did a Fighting Monotype, and at the time, it hadn’t been updated in years. I was close to starting this Fire Monotype on the same old version, 3.7b, when I noticed on the Pokecommunity OP that the latest version’s 4.1e. The most significant changes were additions to the postgame, though one of the areas, Gauntlet Island, can be accessed after battling Norman. I’ll save the Gauntlet Island talk for a standalone video.
So what is Altered Emerald? Well, it’s an altered version of Emerald. The alterations are massive. The map has a fresher coat of paint, sometimes unnecessarily. Nearly every route feels so busy. More important for the player, this hack has its own meta. Sweeping, massive changes to Pokemon, quite a few of them are very wacky. Disguise Sudowoodo, Shadow Shield Mismagius, Hariyama’s now a Special Attacker, Rock/Electric Probopass. Unique abilities. Opposite Day, Girafarig’s ability that inverts the type chart. Gravitate, activates the Gravity field effect. Flame Body and Static now act as Poison Touch. Torrent, Blaze, and Overgrow apply that 1.5x boost when switching in after a mon of yours goes down, think of it like Retaliate. Tank Shell, Blastoise’s special ability that is basically Self-Sufficient from Radical Red, but with the added 2x healing boost in the rain. I’m just scratching the surface. There’s also an optional patch that has an additional 20 type changes.
Unfortunately, these sweeping changes didn’t really touch Fire-types that much. I think I had more fun with the Fighting Monotype because I had more changes to experience. Here, there weren’t enough changes. Fire is a primary type, I don’t think there are many, if any, have Fire as a secondary type. Hacks that have type changes tend to add or change a secondary type. So when it comes to Fire-types getting type changes, there were so few and far between, most of them came from that optional patch. For example, Fire/Steel Torkoal, Fire/Fighting Magmortar, Fire/Psychic Ninetales. So, that optional patch was necessary for me. Grass/Fire Sunflora, that’s the only secondary Fire-type change.
Segue to a gripe I had about this run. Learnsets should’ve been more accommodating to these type changes, at least on the Fire side. I always think of Torkoal as having a better Special movepool. Its Attack and Special Attack are the same, at least in this hack. With that said, its Special Steel movepool is nonexistent. No Flash Cannon, and Gen 4 moves definitely exist in this hack. Sure, Gyro Ball, but come on! It gets Steelworker if you don’t want Drought, so 2x STAB sounds awesome, but ugh, Flash Cannon would’ve been nice. Mixed attacker too, but that really didn’t cross my mind.
Sunflora’s more egregious. It doesn’t get access to any Fire-type moves! That’s why I had Flower Guard (boosts Defense, Accuracy and Speed of Grass-types) for the 4th move, I had no other good alternative. Sunny Day would’ve been good, that’s a hindsight thought from the Wallace battle. Ninetales doesn’t get Psychic by level-up, I had to wait until Victory Road, and even that required me going through a somewhat annoying puzzle.
Segue to another major feature in this hack, puzzles. Quite a few of them are optional, some of them are annoying. There are hints in the Pokecommunity thread, but some feel deliberately vague. They aren’t as stupid as Vega, so don’t worry about that.
Difficulty? The complaints I have aren’t related to difficulty. This was not really hard. I lost 9 times. It would’ve been 5 if I used Combusken to destroy Roxanne. I deliberately went with the harder option, maintaining a level cap in the process.
The Radical Red effect on my mindset comes through here. What I mean is that it’s very annoying that there isn’t a nature changer. Synchronize being only 50% like vanilla Emerald. Weird how there’s mechanics from Gen 4, but not ALL of them. Limitation I guess.
I have some more ranting, which I’ll do in a pinned comment. Let me be clear though, this is a great hack. I think I just went with a very limiting Monotype. Take the Monotype aspect out, you would probably have fun playing with these wacky mons. Spam Dancer on Grumpig of all mons, Ice-types get buffed Defense in the hail. Poison-types take 3/4 damage from poisoned foes, and other fun things that the AI takes advantage of half the time.
The music’s from B2W2, N’s battle theme. I used it before and I feel like using it again. I didn’t include the Magma/Aqua Admin battles, they were pushovers, the Aqua ones specifically felt unchanged from vanilla Emerald.
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