crystal clear review

For the last year or so I've been on a Pokémon binge. The whole thing was completely unintentional and definitely wasnt supposed to last as long as it has. I was originally planning to create physical prints of everything the Game Boy Printer is capable of printing and scanning it into some kind of archive. To do this, it would involve completing the Pokédex in Pokémon Yellow version and one of the Generation 2 Pokèmon games. I thought it was going to suck. Prior to this binge, I hadn't bothered with this series since I was a child.

I felt like I'd outgrown Pokémon, or that it wasn't for me. As a kid, I'd play through Pokémon Yellow Version over and over until I got my hands on Crystal Version, which replaced Yellow. Eventually, my brother got Sapphire version, which lacked several superficial features that Crystal version had, and I wrote the series off.

Even after playing through Yellow and Crystal countless times, I didn't understand how these games are supposed to be played. Frankly, nobody did back then. They were very vague about mechanics that I now find extremely compelling. Like Stat EXP and genetics. I'm a complete sucker for stuff like that.

When I saught to complete the pokédex in my childhood copy of Yellow version, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I ended up buying Pokémon Stadium to help me consolidate my pokémon, I ended up playing through both Blue and Red, sometimes more than once, just to get certain species. I was going for what's known in the community as a "Living Dex". In othet words, I was trying to capture one of every single pokémon. This isn't how you're supposed to do it. These games aren't structured to facilitate this, but it is possible. Filling the pokédex generally involves the player having been in posession of, at one point or another, all the pokémon. It doesn't care if you currently have them. This helps encourage trading, a key mechanic.

I did it and it's on my fridge to prove it.

After about 100 hours of play over multiple games, I had caught and nicknamed each of the of original 151 pokémon. I wanted more, but didn't want to spend money. I started playing through the games I already had copies of. I played through Ruby, then HeartGold, Scarlet, and finally Legends:Arceus. In those playthroughs, I managed to compile a second living Dex of all 151 original Pokémon. This was becoming an obsession and I'd completely forgotten about my Game Boy Printer project at this point. The next set of games I wanted to go for, and am still techincally working on, is Generation 2. That's Gold, Silver, Crystal, and Stadium 2. This is going to be another living dex, and it's still in the works. Since I only had Gold initially, I bought Silver, Crystal, and Stadium 2 as well as a second N64 transfer pak. The price was ridiculous but I no longer cared. I want to do this and it's worth it to me.

Where does Pokémon Crystal Clear fall into all this? Well, it is in fact a ROM Hack of Pokemon Crystal. The first step in completing a living dex is setting it up. In this case, that means unlocking every single area in Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal which I'd done prior to playing this hack. Since late May, I've been playing these three games exclusively. All together, I've put roughly 200 hours into them. If I add in Crystal Clear, It's a little over 250 hours.

Crystal Clear is a hack of Pokémon Crystal that fundementally changes the game. I don't even know where to start. You'll probably feel the same way if you were to play it. Shockslayer, the creator, took this extremely linear RPG and made it open world. Not only that, but there are litterally limitless options when it comes to character creation. You can draw your own character if you want and import it into the game, if you so choose.

After you create your character, you gotta choose where you start. There are 22 cities in this game, and which one you choose will decide how difficult things will be for you in the beginning. Further adding to this is your choice of starter. The game immediately asks you to choose one from the get go. There are no cutscenes, no fetch quests; you just get your starter. Players can import thier own starter or choose from the 30 (!) available by default. There's obvious ones like Bulbasaur, Pikachu, and Totodile, but also wierd stuff like Ditto and Porygon.

I initailly chose Azelea Town, with Vulpix as my Starter since I've never used one. I like the vibe of Azelea Town. It vaguely reminds me of where I grew up. Crystal Clear has no structure whatsoever, so you can go wherever you want, whenever you want, from the very start. I basically just trudged through the forest until I got to the outskirts of Goldenrod City, where wild pokemon immediately kicked my Vulpix's ass.

You'd think that structurally, everything I've told you shouldn't work, yet, it mostly does. The object of the game is still to get all 16 badges throughout the Johto and Kanto regions, and each time you collect a badge, the pokémon that other trainers use against you get stronger. However, wild Pokémon do not scale in this way. It reminds me of Dragon Warrior, where you just kind of wander into an area and get your ass destroyed by over leveled monsters. It's easy enough to avoid trainers, not so much wild pokémon. Outside of the beginning of the game, this wasn't a problem.

The reason why I acrued 200+ hours between Gold, Silver, and Crystal has nothing to do with incompetence regarding my living dex. I'm also looking to complete Pokémon Stadium 2. A lot of that time was spent grinding, breeding, and just generally preparing my pokémon for what is considered the hardest game in the series. The problem with this is that Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal don't tell you how far along in training your pokémon are. Nor do they tell you whether or not your pokémon's core genetics are any good. Two of the same pokémon could be vastly different depending on whether or not they have good genetics and are trained. Training isn't just leveling up. A Pikachu that is fully trained at lv100 with utterly wipe out a lv100 that isn't trained. All of the Gameboy games combined have exactly one piece of dialog that I can think of that tell you about these mechanics. A sign on cycling road that says something like "every pokémon is an individual". This is very true, but can easily be misconstrued as flavor text. No other RPG that I'm aware of goes this far to complicate things and says nothing about it.

a perfect magneton is a lot like a perfect soda can. neat, but ultimately useless

Crystal Clear not only acknowledges these mechanics, but it takes the guess work and all of the math out of utilizing them. You learn immediately whether or not a pokémon has good genetics. When I was looking to train a Dodrio for Stadium 1, I caught 10 Doduo at the same lvl and compared their stats to make sure I got the one with the best stat potential. It took probably 45 minutes to an hour. Crystal Clear gives you an item that you can use to see the genetic makeup of a wild pokémon with a button press. No more guess work. I don't know if I like this.

Part of the fun for me was all that guesswork and since it's so imprecise, none of my GSC pokémon are perfect. For example my Umbreon from Silver has bad Special Attack/Defense genetics. Even so, it's undeniably my Umbreon, and it's helped me through several cups on Stadium 2 despite that. Where as, my pokémon that I've caught and trained in Crystal Clear all have nearly perfect genetics. By design, I chose to make sure that they did. There's very little question that they'd dominate in Stadium 2, (which Crystal Clear is fully compatable with) at that point it comes down to my own strategy.

I probably will never use the pokémon I've trained in Crystal Clear to make progress in Stadium 2. Simply because of this. Sure, I'll use them to screw around, but I don't want to mess up the challenge. I need to see my imperfect yet still currated teams bust skulls. Who knows? Maybe different combinations of all three of my teams from GSC are what I'll need to finally rip that game a new one.

Still, Crystal Clear doesn't actively force you to engage in this awareness of the hidden mechanics. It also doesn't just give away perfect Pokémon, you do work for them. I think Game Freak hid these mechanics for a very good reason. It enforces what pokémon fundementally is. Without that mystery, it's not as fun.

I know lots of people enjoy being able to see this information whenever they need to, but it's not for me. Even so, knowing this stuff will help you far more than it ever could in vanilla GSC because the trainers are much harder to take on. Vanilla GSC had a horrible level curve, as well as utterly braindead AI trainers. The games only challenge is a Miltank that can be crippled with Roar or Mud-Slap.

Gym battles are hard now, and with newly introduced scaling, they're always going to be hard. That's right, you can challenge any gym at any time, and they'll scale according to your current badge count. You may also challenge them repeatedly if you're into that kind of thing. This eliminates the repetition involved with end game grinding. In GSC, you have two choices once you've defeated a majority of trainers. Wait for trainers to call on the phone, or grind the Elite 4/S.S. Aqua. S.S. Aqua is only available 4 days out of the week so truly your only choice is the Elite 4. Lets be real, that gets boring.

Since every gym can be rematched at any difficulty immediately after you initially defeat the leader, the variety is exponentially increased. Falkner and his level 7 Pidgey become Falkner and his Legendary Birds. This is an example of the fans doing it better than Game Freak. Pokémon Scarlet and Voilet are similarly open world, and they don't do any of this. Not even close. It's utterly pathetic that a fan game made on such weak hardware so handedly defeats a contemporary release.

The new areas included in Crystal Clear make the regions of Johto and Kanto feel more complete and lived in. You can now traverse the bay between Cherrygrove City and Route 32. This new bay comes complete with an entirely new cave system to explore that even links to Union Cave. That's right, you can go straight from Cherrygrove City to the Ruins of Alph just by traversing cave systems. It's completely nuts. That's not to mention that all these areas have interesting things to do in them that help you in a variety of ways. I'm not going to spoil things, but I would recommend you explore Cinnabar Island throughly as early into the game as you can. Bring a pokémon that knows Dig with you. Areas that were already in the game have been spruced up in a variety of ways. Without spoiling things, it would serve you well to explore everything.

randy savage is back, in realitor form.

Crystal Clear lets you buy you own house or room from Randy Savage of all people. Sometimes when you buy a house, it'll unlock a new area for you to explore. Bill's Cottage for instance. Try examining things in your room. You'll like what you find. You can also decorate your house with plants, dolls, and posters. Unfortunately you can only own one house at a time. I feel like it's a missed opportunity for some kind of real estate mini game. We've seen stupider things in official games. Nothing will ever beat the sandwhich mini-game in terms of sheer absurdity.

The real estate buying portion of the game is actually one of the most interesting things to me. On paper, it's completely pointless, but it really hammers in the idea that you're exploring a world and in charge of how you do it. Your choice of home changes a lot. Maybe it makes a cave or item easier to access, or maybe it's a convenience thing. You get to choose whenever you want. Pokémon has always been a game about personal choices. Who should be on my team?", what should this moveset look like?" and "What should my new Rhyhorns name be?" are part of the fun. Adding "where should I live?" to this is a very welcome change and I hope whatever comes next from Game Freak has something like this.

There are a metric ton of quality of life improvements. Customizable music, streamlined breeding, Running shoes, and follow pokémon ala Pokémon HeartGold/SoulSilver among them. The most insane to me is the improvements to the Pokédex. What was once both clunky and useless has become an invaluable tool. No longer is it just a load of flavor text with vague, sometimes inaccurate location info. Crystal Clear's Pokedex puts even Earls Pokémon Academy to shame. You wanna know movesets? You got em. You wanna know what time of day to hunt? It's in there. You wanna see what shinys look like? Have at it. There has never been an official pokémon game with a pokédex that is this useful. It's completely mindblowing the first time you open it and mess around. I sincerely doubt Game Freak will ever create a Pokédex this useful. Enjoy it, and appreciate it.

That's a lot of what Crystal Clear is to me. I kept asking myself why Game Freak isn't doing the things that Crystal Clear does. Why a ROM Hack of a game from 2001 is better in every concievable way than Scarlet and Violet. Don't get me wrong, I greatly enjoyed Pokémon Scarlet. But frankly, the only thing it has on Crystal Clear is pokémon variety. These are two pokémon games that are trying to do the same thing. It's wild to me just how much more of a complete vision Crystal Clear is.

it's wild that this even works at all

Like I mentioned before Crystal Clear is fully compatable with Pokémon Stadium 2. This is fantastic, and I'm very happy this was considered. You can even use it with a hacked version of Stadium 2 to display your Pokémon's custom pallettes. I never tested this though. Game Boy Tower is fully functional, I spent several hours on it and never had issues.

If you're like me, trying to do a living dex, Stadium 2 is invaluable. With Crystal Clear, I've made the decision not to use it to aid my living dex, because I'm trying to stay as legit as possible. As such, my usage of the Pokèmon Lab with it has been limited. I can confirm that trading with other games works, because I was curious about genetics of pokémon I'd raised in different games. Crystal Clear traded with both Red and Silver just fine via Stadium 2.

One issue I ran into was with how Stadium 2 treats certain items that didn't exist in GSC. They just show up as blank. I'm concerned that interacting with them might corrupt Stadium 2's item storage function. I have an absurd amount of TMs and other valuable things in there that I don't want to lose. I honestly doubt it's an actual issue. I'm just being paranoid.

Crystal Clear is a masterpiece, and if you haven't played it, you should. That is to say, after you finish a playthrough of Gold, Silver, or Crystal. A lot of the best things Crystal Clear has to offer rely on the player already being familiar with one of those. I've been intentionally vague about several aspects to avoid spoiling potential players. The new maps I've been finding have sparked my imagination. I feel like a child again when I play this, never knowing what kind of secret I'm going to find. This is a ROM Hack you could sink hundreds of hours into and still not see everything. If you're into pokémon, I implore you to check this out. I think it's wild that my wierd little Game Boy Printer project lead me to this. Even funnier, I can print from Crystal Clear with it. It all comes full circle.