This blog is special for many reasons. One is that all the videos seen will have been made BY ME (which also means you get to hear my extensive music playlist in the background if you have volume on which includes Imagine Dragons and Disney music. And two, this is talking about a fan-game rather than a video game, because I can. Anyway, those are your warnings for the blog.

Introduction

So I’m mad. Be it from Axezura not coming home in FE Heroes or Ayra being a banner unit in FE Heroes meaning I’m like 99.99% positive I won’t get her, I’m mad. So, what better way to get mad at things that are 100% luck than play something with fake difficulty I’ll want to hate myself even more? Now, I’m not trying to say I am the best at video games, but sometimes games come along and just make you so mad at whatever. It could be story reasons or just reasons in the gameplay, and in MOST games the difficulty being hard is understandable. Take a game like Dark Souls, favorite series of many and (from what I’ve heard), extremely difficult. But you know what you’re getting when you go into it. It’s difficult but you signed yourself up for this. Take a game series like Pokemon for contrast, you don’t play it for difficulty unless you put some challenge on yourself. Which is exactly why 99% of Pokemon fan games/ROM hacks are just unnecessarily difficult because that’s what I want when I play Pokemon right? To showcase this, I played through the first like… hour of Pokemon Glazed, a ROM Hack that won the Pokemon Hack of the Year award in 2012 (not a very coveted award though). I have so much hatred for this that I could honestly complain about it for a good month’s worth of blogs, but I’ll spare you guys.

The Theory

So, I played through the first hour to showcase this abstract concept called ‘fake difficulty’. Compared to say, signing yourself up for UCONN Physics back in high school which you know for a fact will be hell on earth, fake difficulty is basically the opposite of that. Just something so… annoying that you have no power over. And I figured, there really is no better way to show this than a Pokemon game, mostly because they have levels and are easily shown. So, just a quick term I need to define is ‘grinding’. This is most commonly used in RPG games (like Pokemon) to mean you sitting there mindlessly trying to raise your team’s levels. Now, in most mainline Pokemon games, grinding is not needed at all. So, I figured to take a fan game and see if the ‘no grinding’ concept still works (and hint it doesn’t). Anyway, Pokemon games are easy enough to tell when something is horribly wrong thanks to the level system. Say I have a Level 15 Pokemon and my opponent has a level 25, the 25 would kick my ass. Easy to understand. Now, for the experiment, I played up to the 3rd gym in Pokemon Glazed, without mindlessly sitting around and grinding my team for EXP, so I only did required fights and fought wild Pokemon when I could, but didn’t go out of my way to do so. What were the results? Well let’s find out

Also you don’t need to have volume on unless you’d like to hear my music playlist I have. I’d say something but it’s literally just Imagine Dragons and Disney music so.

GYM 1

Easy enough. Don’t really have much to say about the first gym, the game literally gives you the Mudkip FOR FREE (which FE HEROES SHOULD HAVE DONE WITH AYRA)… Okay sorry got a little mad there. Moving on..

LITERALLY THE MOST BS PART

I’ve played this hack a few times and literally have no idea how on earth you are supposed to defeat 3 level 25 FULLY EVOLVED POKEMON without using at least 2 Gastly/Haunter and cheesing it with Curse. I literally think it’s impossible to do it otherwise. And in case my choice use of acronyms is anything, this is honestly the part of the game that’s just… I ask myself “Why” at least 100 times playing through this part, because it’s so unnecessarily difficult. It’s annoying to play through because your team will not be anywhere close to that level and just… I could rant more but I’ll spare you.

Gym 2 + A little extra

The second gym leader was actually harder than that in previous versions of the game. Fun right? But in case you couldn’t tell from the video, your levels this game are super low without (cheating and hacking in Rare Candies to level up without grinding), so it’s just completely stupid level inflation. Normally in.. real Pokemon games you see your first level 30 Pokemon around the… 4th or 5th gym depending on the game. Nope just throw one at you after the second gym it’s all good right?

Gym 3

Ha. I’ve ranted about this damn gym more than enough to some of my friends and just… I really wish I got further than the Seadra because it gets worse than that. For reference, in Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal, the FINAL gym Leader had a Kingdra, the super awesome Water/Dragon type that was new, and it was really difficult because you 100% didn’t have anything to really fight it. Then in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald the FINAL gym leader had a Milotic, this really pretty tank of a water type. Both of these were FINAL GYM Pokemon because they are really good. And two of the Pokemon this gym leader had that we didn’t see before her Seadra kicked my ass were Kingdra and Milotic. Because…. why?

Conclusion

Now I know I didn’t go much into depth as to the actual theory behind fake difficulty, but just watching the videos and seeing how outclassed I am when I am playing the game normally should help. If anything, I mostly throw the term around when I’m playing a game and it just makes me ask myself “Why”. And I have a lot of anger and wanted to take it out someway.

Next time:

I have no idea what my next one will be about. I’m gonna try to have it be interesting and I’ll see what I can come up with. So thanks for reading and uhhh

Bye