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Pokemon Emerald Expansion Project
Rundown
What if the pokemon world was more expansive? What if pokemon wasn't just a bitesized RPG? What if pokemon had Elder Scrolls style side quests? How do you include a fresh set of new pokemon without washing away the region's uniqueness away? What do I, a player with thousands of hours, want out of a new POkemon game? These are all questions I asked when I thought up this project.
What is this hack about?
What is this hack about?
This hack is functionally a total overhaul of Pokemon Emerald. Every map has been changed, some completely redone. A focus has been placed on expanding the size of the gameworld while retaining the design of the original maps, going for a "that's what I remember it looking like" vibe. Think of this as going from Morrowind to Skyrim in terms of game world size. Of course, expanding the map size without adding content would be pointless. So, what's the new content? See below!
Features
- 80 New Dungeons and Improved HMs
Grottos, Forests, Caves, Ancient Ruins, Burrows, Abandoned buildings, secret basements, and other locations added around the map, with an average of 2 new dungeons per map. Dive is featured on nearly every map with water. HMs are featured heavily in the overworld, providing new chances to catch rare pokemon (cut trees and pokemon under strength rocks) and new areas to explore, with optional paths and items blocked by HMs in each area. Based on Bethesda's design philosophy described by New Vegas Director Josh Sawyer as "The Rule of 3" the player should always have at least 3 things close by to do. And, for the first time ever in a pokemon game, Waterfall can be used on land, and functions the same as Rock Climb on small waterfall streams, adding more areas and depth to each location in the game. HMs are retyped, reworked and redistributed to be less awful.
[*]New Routes and Islands
Each region has a port city for you to land in. See what Virbank City looked like before they built the powerplant, observe the sleeping snorlax in Vermillion, and more. Event Islands (Faraway, Birth and Naval Rock) can be traveled to after finding all of the pieces to each respective map. New routes have been added including a ruin filled desert with an oasis town, a new path leading to the safari zone, an island off the coast of Mauville and more. Almost all new content is optional to complete the main game, will you explore these areas early or save them to be discovered in the post game?
[*]Expanded Loot System
Bored of lame potions and great balls? Me too. Items have been expanded to reflect all of the new additions since Emerald's release. That's over 200 new items. Dungeons take queues from traditional RPGs, offering loads of juicy loot at the end and scattered around each dungeon. Items like the focus sash and red card are now useful in the game, as items like these are among the loot you'll find. Items are no longer one-off, instead you find plenty of Miracle Seeds, Light Clays and other normally one off items as loot as well, making building a library of pokemon for the battle frontier that much easier.
[*]Sidequests and Better NPCs
Consider the battle between Aqua and Magma to be the main quest, nothing has changed, but several dozen side quests have been added. Escort missions, catch specific pokemon, find lost items, defeat rampaging pokemon, etc. Some NPCs will now offer small side quests for the player to complete. All tutorial dialog and sign posts have been removed. Trainer tips have been removed. Replaced by NPCs that will give you small stories about the region, cities, routes and world you're exploring, taking inspo from the world building of games like Fallout New Vegas, Baldur's Gate, Phantasy Star IV and Xenoblade Chronicles to make the world of pokemon feel lived in and immersive, without changing the tone or spirit of the games.
[*]Overhauled Hoenn Dex
The problem with many, many romhacks in my opinion is that adding 900 pokemon into a small region feels both exceedingly cramped and washes away the uniqueness of the region. Instead of taking this route, I've opted to build a new pokedex of around 320 Pokemon, all obtainable in game through various means. A focus has been placed on integrating the new pokemon with the Hoenn pokemon in a way that feels both realistic (picks based on ecology and food chain logic), stylistic similarities to Hoenn, possible counterparts and type niches. Examples include pairing Mienfoo and Makuhita, or changing Masquerain's stats to be Gollsopod's special attack counterpart, or having different water pokemon on each route, with one common pokemon on each in order to make each water route uniquely it's own area. The Pokedex is one of the most fundemental parts of Pokemon's world building, we hope to make Hoenn refreshingly familiar.
[*]Improved Pokemon
Most pokemon have expanded movesets, working off Gen 7's battle engine, from there, every pokemon has been picked over and edited so even useless pokemon like Cascoon might have some niche fun usage. Movesets are also tweaked to give pokemon new moves at high levels. Rewards for leveling up your pokemon to the 80s and 90s. Maybe niche egg moves, maybe weird tech moves, perhaps even powerful gimmick moves. Pokemon typing, abilities and stats are adjusted on a case by case basis, with each pokemon being considered, so abilities might now be unique to each evolution stage for instance. Or BSTs might be adjusted to match another similar pokemon. - Quality of Life and Improved Difficulty
Every quality of life improvement you'd expect from these types of hacks is in. EV training grottos can be found around the map. The difficulty is designed to be harder than the vanilla Emerald, but not cheap or overwhelming. It should provide a brisk challenge for experienced trainers and a tough adventure for beginners.
[*]New Pokemon!?
Instead of Fakemon, we've decided to create "New" Pokemon and Regional Variants based on Beta designs leaked and revealed over the last few years. Some visual variants ala Arbok having a different pattern as well. Hoenn will never feel more like a faraway island than it has in this hack. We've hand selected 3 dozen beta designs to be reworked into hoenn pokemon.
[*]Open and Community based development
Daily, even hourly updates posted via discord. Open recruitment of developers. Feedback is taken and wanted. We believe that the reason so many promising hacks go unfinished is because so many talented devs and hackers "one man it" when Emerald itself was developed by over 30 people! We hope that our transparent development style will bring fresh ideas to our hack.
Screenshots
Credits
- (Critical) acetrainer#6033 - Mapping, Idea Guying, Lead Dev
- thoughtsease#2154 - Artist/Music/Documentation
More Information:
- Official Discord Server
https://discord.gg/byP25rK4gr
Download
"When It's Finished"
