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gamersonthego · 6 months

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GOTG Review: Pokemon Emerald Rogue

This is the next game in my Backlog Roulette series, where each month I spin a wheel to randomly select a game on my massive backlog that I must play (though not necessarily to completion). These wheel spins occur on the monthly preview episodes I co-host with my friends on The Casual Hour podcast.

Pokemon is a series that is near and dear to me, but since X & Y, it feels like the direction Game Freak has gradually taken the franchise in a direction that diverges from what I want out these games. The move to 3D was inevitable, but it has also made the games clunkier and less vibrant as a result. And while the transition to more open-world gameplay elements has been intriguing, it’s added an aimless quality to exploring the environments that often leaves me cold.

I know, Pokemon Scarlet. I know...

If you like the new style of Pokemon games, that’s great. I’ve played both Sword and Scarlet and found them to be generally decent times. But I rarely think about them outside of their initial playthroughs, and for the first time in my life, I decided to skip the new mainline content with the release of Scarlet & Violet’s DLC.

Look, you can't say I didn't give the new games a shot.

Instead, I’ve found myself thinking more and more about the Pokemon romhacking community. Pokemon romhacks primarily take place in the third generation of Pokemon games, those found on the Game Boy Advance (there are also quite a few hacks from the Game Boy’s Gens 1 and 2, and a handful from the DS era of Gens 4 and 5, but the GBA games appear to be the sweet spot for hackers). These romhacks experiment in all sorts of ways, from difficulty mods like the “Kaizo” games, to games with brand new stories, regions and Pokemon like Pokemon Vega. There are games that attempt to recreate the Pokemon anime or manga, and others that flip the concept of Pokemon on its head, like in one hack where you play as a member of Team Rocket and steal other people’s Pokemon. Many of these hacks incorporate more contemporary ideas from Game Freak’s work — Mega Evolution, new forms and types, Z-moves, etc. — but keep them within the general framework and design space of the Gen 3 games, which gives them all a strong foundation upon which to build (also, using the GBA games as a base means these romhacks play perfectly on my Analogue Pocket.)

Pokemon Emerald Rogue is probably the most extreme and interesting romhack I’ve played yet, totally upending the formula of Pokemon by converting the game into a roguelike similar to titles like Hades or Rogue Legacy.

Emerald Rogue (I played Pokemon Emerald Rogue EX v1.3 in case any of what I’m about to say changes in future updates) spits you out in an empty hub area save for three buildings — a config house where you can change some settings, a lab where you can choose your first Pokemon and a building to the north where you can start a run.

The three Pokemon you have to choose from are random. My choices were Omanyte, Squirtle and Clampearl. Knowing survivability and flexibility were probably the most important things for a roguelike, Omanayte and its dual typing of rock and water seemed to be the right choice. Then I went on my first run.

A run in Emerald Rogue starts you in a weird-looking overworld. This is essentially a decision tree on where to go next, like in FTL or Slay the Spire. The choices in front of you have names like “average gloomy route” or “mighty wet route.” These names correspond to the challenge of that route and the general preponderance of Pokemon types that you’ll find there — a mighty sharp route for instance will have more trainer battles and feature more steel-type monsters.

Once you choose a route, you’re put into a modified version of a route you’d see in a traditional Pokemon game. There are grass patches, items strewn about and trainers looking for battles. You start with five pokeballs and the catch rates appear to be much higher than usual, making adding new team members relatively painless. Like in a typical Pokemon game, catching a Pokemon adds it to your party, but if you catch more Pokemon than your team of six can hold, you must immediately release one — there’s no PC box with which to hold extra creatures in runs.

You’ll also notice that when you defeat wild Pokemon, you gain levels FAST, and the exp all item makes sure your whole team is leveling speedily as well. There’s very little grinding in Emerald Rogue. Instead, the game introduces level caps for each area, asking you to make quick decisions about your team’s movesets as they learn new abilities rapidly, then challenging you with trainer battles you can’t just overcome by outleveling them. And if in one of those battles, you happen to lose a Pokemon, it doesn’t just faint, it’s automatically removed from your team at the end of battle, losing any items and investment you put into that Pokemon, but leaving you with a slot open to add another ‘mon as you continue.

Once you complete a route by getting to the end, you advance on the overworld tree and pick another route. There are also various other stops along the way, such as healing stations, shops for pokeballs, TMs and battle items, a lab where you can find your previously defeated Pokemon (though picking them back up often leaves you with a burden, like having to pay 10% more on items at shops during that run), tough trainer battles where you can win special items and take one of their Pokemon if you win or dens where a rare Pokemon is available to be captured (either legendaries or Pokemon with hidden abilities, like a Heracross with Moxie — a passive ability that raises its attack after every Pokemon it defeats in a battle).

At the end of an overworld tree is a gym battle, where you can quickly raise all your Pokemon to the level cap if you haven’t done so already, or heal up (free at first, but gets expensive quickly,) before facing off against a random Pokemon Emerald gym leader. These gym leaders keep their type affinities — Wattson still uses electric types, fire for Flannery, etc. — but their teams have been enhanced with competitive movesets and overhauled AI. These are tough battles, and while they’re not Kaizo-level difficult, they are meant to trip you up. Also, the battles are on “set” mode, so you don’t get the advantage of a free switch anytime you defeat an opposing Pokemon, furthering the strategic bend of these battles.

Beating a gym leader permanently nets you an HM, which work a little differently here: You don’t have to teach these moves to a Pokemon to use them outside of battle (and even if you do, they can be deleted freely in favor of other moves, unlike traditional Pokemon games,) and they’re mostly used to access shortcuts or alternate paths in the routes. Then the Pokemon that survived the battle will get fully healed and you’ll be put on a new overworld tree to do it all again. Beating the game requires you to defeat all eight gym leaders, all four Elite Four members and two champions, meaning 14 loops total in a single run, and the difficulty ramps up with each loop.

If and when your team gets wiped out, you’ll be taken back to the hub area, and you’ll lose all the items, money and Pokemon you had on your run (save for the HMs you were able to unlock as well as your starter, though it’ll be back to its original level 5 state without any of the moves you taught it). Then you’re given money and items proportional to how far you got in your run. This is where the roguelike becomes less like a Spelunky and more like a Hades — anything you do with this money and these items in the hub is permanent. Shops that open in the hub will sell you TMs, so I could buy Ice Beam and equip it to Omanyte for use in all future runs (protip: don’t teach your TMs in the hub world. Instead, hold them until you start a run, and then teach it, so you have the option to teach it to something else later). They can also sell pokeballs, potions and battle items so you’re better stocked for any and all future runs.

There’s also a Safari Zone that eventually opens up, allowing you (for a price) to go in and permanently catch Pokemon that you’ve caught on your runs before (though legendaries won’t be added to that pool until you progress much further into a run). While you can only take one Pokemon with you into any one run, you do get a PC in the hub area, so you can keep all the Safari Zone Pokemon you catch and swap them out as you please (for my second run, I benched Omanyte and brought in Houndour instead).

That is essentially what Emerald Rogue is all about. Now, you may have been thinking of a question during all of this, a question I asked myself many times as I played Emerald Rogue — isn’t this just basically a Nuzlocke, where you play a game of Pokemon that incorporates permadeath and other self-imposed rules? In many ways, yeah, that’s exactly what it is, a Nuzlocke where instead of imposing the rules on yourself, the game automatically accounts for and streamlines those rules for you.

But I think there’s something more at play here. Nuzlocking a traditional Pokemon game is often about mastery of that specific title. When playing FireRed, you know you have to come up with a counter to Brock or Misty or the trainer with two Geodude and a Graveler who likes to spam Self Destruct in Rock Tunnel. You know that if you can just get past this next part, you'll get the TM for Psychic. And you know exactly where you can find a Magikarp to evolve into a Gyarados. In Emerald Rogue, you don’t know what the next trainer or gym leader will bring, so the mastery required is of the pure battle mechanics themselves. The items and TMs and Pokemon you have access to are random (or curated by you in the hub), forcing you to make do with what you have or what you can scrounge up. It’s a game about anticipation and reaction, not one of planning and strategy. That’s why I think while they play in similar spaces, each of these ways of playing Pokemon is valid and interesting in their own ways. Emerald Rogue has innovated on the design of Pokemon is a way Game Freak would almost assuredly never do. It goes against the philosophy of contemporary Pokemon games (hell, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company barely acknowledge the existence of Nuzlockes in the first place, and recent games have made design decisions that make that style of play almost impossible.) If you have become disillusioned by modern Pokemon games, if you’re looking for an interesting challenge that isn’t Kaizo-level impossible or if you want to remember just how damn good Pokemon can be, Emerald Rogue is a triumph of the form and well worth your time. Now excuse me, I just caught a Galarian Zapdos in the Safari Zone and I can't wait to try it out on my next run.

#game review #backlog roulette #game boy advance #pokemon #pokemon emerald rogue

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