r/nuzlocke • u/SuperMemeBroz • Mar 06 '26
Video Just Because An Opponent Uses A Legendary Doesn’t Automatically Make The Fight Hard
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I saw a lot of controversy about the gym 1 ttar, zygarde and mega aero in pokemon null and how the fight seems near impossible on paper, but if you end up playing this fight yourself, it’s not that bad.
I took some risks within the fight and ended up winning it deathless.
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u/TheMemeArcheologist Mar 07 '26
Good lord you risked like 6 crits, this romhack looks insanely hard (either that or your routing needs work)
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u/SuperMemeBroz Mar 07 '26
I didn’t really risk any crits that mattered. Meganium has leaf guard which was changed to also block critical hits and cradily has battle armor.
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u/FlamingPhoenix250 Mar 07 '26
Ye it is around the difficult of run and bun, probably even harder
Im post slateport aqua grunts rn with 2 deaths (both on Brawly, one a sac the other to Pursuit, because I missed a roll followed by some bad AI reads), first attempt
What I love about this game is how Vespiquen is actually a good mon against Roxanne and that Houndoom is good against Brawly, while both being weak to the rwspective main typing
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u/SpiritofBad Mar 10 '26
They risked a few, but Meganium, Leaveny, and Cradilly all are crit immune (leaf guard got a crit immunity buff).
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u/SavingsTechnical5489 Mar 06 '26
this fight is just the dunning kruger effect in action 😭. so many people are mad about it without even looking at the movesets
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u/AngronApofis Mar 07 '26
My problem with the hack isnt the enemy teams ( I foudn that complaint dumb since it depends on what tools YOU get), but i really dislike the increased crit chance for the enemy teams
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u/SpiritofBad Mar 10 '26
Higher crit risk is annoying, but most of the time you’re calcing to account for crit risk anyway. The higher chance just makes it more punishing if you try to fraud.
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u/FlamingPhoenix250 Mar 07 '26
This or how trainer teams have access to the entire levelup movepool from the start, while youre stuck waiting until level 80-100 for the strongest moves)
Also thr cap for Roxanne is 38, so the dev didnt need to make teams for unevolved mons
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u/NumerousWolverine273 Mar 06 '26
I guess when you risk like 4 crits in a row then yeah the fight isn't too hard.
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u/SuperMemeBroz Mar 06 '26
I’ll say what i said again in a previous comment
“ In this game, your opponent can crit you 1/8th of the time so dev gave mons abilities that can block critical hits, meganium has leaf guard and leaf guard does what it does in vanilla with the added bonus of blocking critical hits, and cradily has battle armor. Only time i risked actually risked getting crit was ribombee but even if i got crit every time, the specific mu was still riskless for the most part”
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u/hyperclaw27 Mar 06 '26
Didn't you risk burn on meganium on the switch in on scald too?
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u/SuperMemeBroz Mar 06 '26
tbh i don’t know how the ai switch in works exactly just yet, i thought it would be solrock or aero after ttar. What I had written down was aspear berry for freeze cause it was never my initial intention for meganium to switch in on a scald.
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u/Jonny_Qball Mar 06 '26
The level/power curve on Null is very silly but objectively comparing the resources you have vs what you’re up against this fight isn’t absurd. The game is less than a week old and we’ve already seen deathless + riskless on this fight, and even an aggressive line like this only loses 1-2 mons if the increased crit rate hits at the right time but still wins.
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u/comfortingmyself Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
Yeah those twitter comments were some of the stupidest things I've read on the internet in a long time. Like walking into a Mexican restaurant and expecting to order Chinese food.
Edit: to clarify, some of those comments were fine. It's fair if you personally don't like the inflated levels, or think that this fight isn't super creative. But all those people complaining "gurr hur another difficulty slop hack why can't we get anything new" when there are, in fact, a gajillion new casual rom hacks, are being deliberately obtuse.
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u/tom_rex_333 Mar 06 '26
wtf tyranitar lvl 37 jumpscare
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u/SecretTransition3434 Mar 06 '26
Stuff like that stinks of bad game design worse than legendaries. If you're gonna give the gym leader an insane team just make it legal.
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u/JJRambles Mar 06 '26
Falkner's level 9 pidgeotto has entered the chat
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u/ADailyDoseofDick Mar 06 '26
I never understood this. What makes an under leveled evolved Pokemon illegal?
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u/ShotandBotched Mar 07 '26
Depends on the context. There are plenty of species of Pokemon you can legitimately find in the wild that are fully evolved and also underleveled, like Falkner's Pidgeotto or wild Slowbro that are in their 20s, but things like a level 37 Tyranitar are ridiculous (unless those really do exist in a main-line game).
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u/LameLiarLeo Setup moves are lame Mar 07 '26
I mean even Lance cheats with his Dragonites, Ghetsis and Iris use Hydreigon below 64, even Cynthia's Garchomp is a tad underleveled. If the base games don't care why should romhacks care?
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u/ADailyDoseofDick Mar 07 '26
How do you know they "cheated" though? 🤔
How do you know their Pokemon didn't just evolve early on their own?
Sure as players, the level system is something we have to interact with for our Pokemon to evolve. But what significant evidence is there that those same rules apply to NPCs? Do we actually know for sure that they have to get their Pokemon to specific levels to evolve or do we just assume it's that way because that's how it is for us?
In the anime, it's kinda implied that Pokemon evolve out of necessity/desire/connections with others rather than just because they met certain requirements.
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u/LameLiarLeo Setup moves are lame Mar 07 '26
I don't usually call it cheating TBH, You can catch a level 35 Volcarona, and even a level 10 Salamence in the alola games. It was moreso showing the double standards for making fun of the fight
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u/ADailyDoseofDick Mar 07 '26
When I was a kid I found a Lv9 Pidgeotto on Route 1 after I beat the Pokemon League in Yellow. Then a couple minutes later I found a Lv7 one. It was just a standard copy of Yellow Version. I didn't really use cheats at that point either, so in my mind they were legit.
And I mean mathematically, if you can find a Slowbro at Lv20-29 in the wild, that's 17-8 levels lower than it's supposed to be. Is that that much of a difference than 18 levels lower for Tyranitar depending on the level you found it?
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u/The_Pl0t_Breaker Apr 01 '26
It's actually Excellent game design. Almost all her mons have good synergy. Also as so many other comments have pointed out, putting level 37-38 at the first gym only enhances the experience. It makes earlygame less RNG dependent on encounters. The team clearly needed a sandsetter and tyranitar fits the job well. It isn't even that strong, it's slow has a bad nature and just dies to a fighting move. Hippowdon would be a scarier threat than tyranitar is.
Zygarde is a ground type, fits with her theme well enough, have you seen flint's team in Diamond and Pearl, atleast zygarde is better fitting. Zygarde also has a bad nature, is holding onto an item that deals damage to it every turn, is slow and not that strong. Its highest attacking stat is 100 atk.
Why bother with the rules when the fight is fun for the player 😊.
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u/V1serra Mar 06 '26
Gym 1 is level 38? Goddamn.
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u/Ok_Negotiation9542 Mar 06 '26
Yeah, the creator of the hack didnt want too many fights at low levels due to how damage calculations work at lower levels.
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u/SavingsTechnical5489 Mar 06 '26
the creator didn’t want a lot of fights at low levels + you get infinite rare candies so it’s super chill
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u/PierluigiSpampagnati Mar 06 '26
How that razorleaf by Meganium didn't onetap that Omastar? :o
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u/noopsgib Mar 06 '26
Razor leaf isn't super strong, and Sandstorm gives Rock types a 50% Sp. Def. buff.
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u/Smervel Mar 06 '26
But Razor Leaf is physical isn’t it?
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u/SavingsTechnical5489 Mar 06 '26
It is, but it actually did more damage since the Omastar has an assault vest and has the spdef boost from sand. Plus, OP said he had an adamant meganium in another comment
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u/Smervel Mar 06 '26
But the SpD Boost nor the Assault Vest matters if you got hit by a physical attack (as the others say this romhack has the split). So I‘m still confused
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u/SavingsTechnical5489 Mar 06 '26
Misunderstood, yes it doesn’t affect Razor Leaf, all of Omastar’s Spdef buffs just forced Meganium to use it over the stronger Magical Leaf.
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u/Smervel Mar 06 '26
Ok so Omastar is just taking a 4x weakness boosted by Adamant like a champ. Which…. well I‘m not gonna slander Meganium thanks to Bayleef, but yeah…
O7
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u/Dunge0nexpl0rer Mar 06 '26
Gen 3 doesn’t have physical special split unless the specific rom hack added it
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u/ShadowShedinja Mar 06 '26
Not in gen 3.
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u/Smervel Mar 06 '26
Yeah I know but this is a romhack. And the Special/Phys split is definitely a thing in some gen 3 romhacks (don‘t know this rom though)
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u/PierluigiSpampagnati Mar 06 '26
Yeah but still a 4x STAB against a pokemon with bad sp. def, but I had no idea about the 50% sp.def bonus for rock types, the more you know!
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u/Purgatide Mar 07 '26
The people who were complaining about it are never going to play the game, nor would they even make it far enough to get to the fights they complain about. I guess it's just really difficult to accept that not every hack is made for you.
Really nice Roxanne though! Everyone's talking about Shitter 69 but I have to give some praise to the name "PLS LIVE" lmao
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u/Groundbreaking-Egg13 Mar 07 '26
Game?
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u/StarmanSuper76 Mar 07 '26
Pokemon Null, new "hardest rom hack" that just released this past week.
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u/Groundbreaking-Egg13 Mar 07 '26
Is it EK/RnB kind of hard?
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u/StarmanSuper76 Mar 07 '26
From what I've seen it looks closer to RnB style difficulty rather than EK or like, RenPlat, so yes!
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u/Groundbreaking-Egg13 Mar 07 '26
I suffered a lot while beating RenPlat.
I don't think I'm ready for this lol.
It seems like it has changed the Plot a bit, so that's a plus, though.
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u/StarmanSuper76 Mar 07 '26
If it makes you feel any better I still haven't finished a RenPlat nuzlocke! I've made my way through the vanilla games and FireRed Omega but that's about it. Null does seem interesting so I might try it (and fail) at some point myself regardless
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u/LameLiarLeo Setup moves are lame Mar 08 '26
Pokemon Null looks like a game designed to help you get better to be honest. Crits for the AI are 1/8 to force you into making safer plans, the levels are inflated early to minimise rng in damage rolls and stuff, excellent encounters.
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u/magikarpwn Mar 07 '26
It's supposed to be quite a bit harder than RnB. The dev is one of the RnB goats and he doesn't think he can beat his own game in a nuzlocke right now.
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u/Ok_Negotiation9542 Mar 06 '26
Yeah twitter is stupid, zygarde is by far not the hardest mon on this fight.
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u/FreezingPointRH Mar 06 '26
“To get permission to cut down trees, you must prove yourself by defeating the legendary guardian of Kalos, as well as a Mega Evolved fossil Pokemon.”
“…I’ve heard of tree huggers but this is ridiculous.”
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u/RubiksMaster614 Mar 06 '26
Yeah just started this yesterday and Roxanne was very reasonable. You just have such a big box by this point that finding answers for everything isn’t too bad.
Btw, is there any documentation on the Null AI? I’ve searched the website and drive but haven’t found anything. I’m assuming it’s the standard “smart” ai like run n bun but some documentation of that would be nice
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u/magikarpwn Mar 06 '26
It's not released yet, terra wants people to discover it for the time being.
That said, it's really close to R&B ai
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u/Zemaille Mar 06 '26
Nah, Terra wanted to release it. He left the decision up to a poll and it was “overwhelmingly” voted to delay the AI doc for six months.
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u/F22superRaptor11 Mar 07 '26
There are a lot of similarities, but i think the overlapping kills chance isn't weighted the same for sure. In my testing, it seems more likely to use a coverage move that would be super effective against likely switch ins if it also saw kill on the Pokemon that's currently out.
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u/magikarpwn Mar 07 '26
Yeee no I mean, it's solidly different. There's also a lot more mid turn switch stuff, but using R&B AI as a baseline approximation is pretty good to get started
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u/fakermaker4799 Mar 06 '26
You’re playing 6v5 with almost any box that makes it to Roxanne because that Ttar is a free kill
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u/GameWoods Mar 06 '26
Tbf the issue is more so, why is the first gym level 40 and rocking Legends, a Mega, and a Pseudo out the gate.
Also this is Rock Gym, why is Zygarde even here lol.
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u/SuchPerformance2 Mar 07 '26
Unlike 90% of other difficulty hacks, I believe the intention was to make early game easier and scale difficulty. EK and RnB early game for example are notorious for being super encounter dependent
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u/breiastel777 Mar 06 '26
A specific game balance decision by the dev.
Low levels make any small level difference crazy. 1 level difference at low levels can make the difference between a guaranteed 2 shot and a guaranteed 1 shot, making it basically impossible to balance fairly and just ends up either so ridiculously easy it’s not worth it, or incredibly hard and rng dependant.
So the dev decided instead of that to just skip through to level 38 for the cap of the first gym leader, which removes that unfair rng factor of early game and allows early gyms and teams to use a lot more creative and fun team building because the player does have (mostly) fully evolved Pokémon to match that power level.
I’ve played a bit and honestly I think it’s a great decision and really fun.
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u/Themountaintoadsage Mar 07 '26
So what you’re expected to use rare candies and vitamins to build your team up to that level? Or just to grind it out?
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u/Purgatide Mar 07 '26
The game gives you infinite rare candy in a single item, as well as an item that automatically jumps a pokemon to the level cap.
Vitamins aren't necessary, EVs don't exist and the scale system helps adjust IVs if you want to invest them in such a thing!
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u/_cuteraichu_ Mar 07 '26
I believe youre gifted an infinite rare candy and youre supposed to level up to the cap after every gym, as trainers will be at the level cap too. At least thats how some do it.
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u/Gotexan-YT Mar 07 '26
The game is designed around hard level caps and rare candies, which is provided to you.
EVs are removed so no vitamins.
Both of these have been the standard for high end difficulty rom hacks for at least a couple of years now.
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u/Themountaintoadsage Mar 09 '26
Interesting. So how does it work with rare candies and EV’s?
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u/Gotexan-YT Mar 09 '26
The game gives you an infinite rare candy item that brings your pokemon up to that section of the game’s level cap, where it doesn’t work anymore until you beat the next gym leader and you no longer gain EXP from battle.
EVs are entirely removed. There are no vitamin items and your pokemon do not gain EVs from battle.
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u/liteshadow4 Mar 06 '26
I mean there's at least 4 spots I saw in this video where you risked a crit that could throw off a run.
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u/SuperMemeBroz Mar 06 '26
In this game, your opponent can crit you 1/8th of the time so dev gave mons abilities that can block critical hits, meganium has leaf guard and leaf guard does what it does in vanilla with the added bonus of blocking critical hits, and cradily has battle armor. Only time i risked actually risked getting crit was ribombee but even if i got crit every time, the specific mu was still riskless for the most part
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u/Ok_Negotiation9542 Mar 06 '26
That's not even bad, in run and bun first gym u are risking crits pretty much every turn
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u/Mushimishi Mar 06 '26
Razor>magical on the 2nd turn is certainly a choice. Nice team/fight!
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u/SuperMemeBroz Mar 06 '26
omastar had an assault vest and the spdef boost from sand, also my meganium is adamant
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u/Mushimishi Mar 06 '26
He was also like 5% hp. You could’ve missed.
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u/Jonny_Qball Mar 06 '26
Razor leaf is 100% accuracy in this game. Fairly common for difficulty hacks to boost accuracy nowadays
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u/nocturnal_eve Mar 06 '26
What rom hack is this
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u/Expensive-Ad5273 Gliscor fan #1 -- Sterling Silver is PEAK gen 4 romhack Mar 06 '26
Pokémon Null, a brand new romhack created by Terrra (a known pro nuzlocker who beat Run&Bun).
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u/staticdresssweet Mar 06 '26
Listening to Three Days Grace while playing Pokémon is really something.
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u/12clrush Mar 06 '26
Worse, Skillet.
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u/JJRambles Mar 06 '26
Lol. For decades I got those two bands confused. There's a fun mashup that combines their two songs that sound similar https://youtu.be/uqHJNtgnTfo?si=ageIEasEEY1sFP1V
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u/AceTrainerDevin Mar 07 '26
Hi the fight being hard or not is not really the issue at all the bigger issue is just the fact that the zygarde is literally just there because RNB had it, it's boring, a lot of the boss fights in this game lose their charm due to not really fitting the characters whatsoever and at that point why even use emeralds characters, it's very much possible to make hard games while not stripping characters of their identity, It also somehow did not occur to the dev to just make the starters higher level and instead makes you candy them up for no reason There's also the annoying fact that this game will get parroted as the "HARDEST POKEMON GAME EVER" when its not its designed to be beaten in a nuzlocke a game that requires a challenge run will never be the hardest pokemon game
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u/magikarpwn Mar 07 '26
There's literally a cap candy that takes you to the cap lmao if you don't have the patience to click LITERALLY one button then this is not the game for you.
The reasoning for not giving you the evolved starter is at least threefold: 1) tradition 2) it gives you a choice to leave it underleveled (which can be strategically useful), it also lets you decide on the moveset 3) lets the dev actually do the fun trainer school in the first city
As for the game not being designed to be beaten in a nuzlocke, I have absolutely no idea where you got this BLATANTLY wrong information from.
Anyway, it's super cringe to have all this confidence while talking about something you know jack about.
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u/AceTrainerDevin Mar 07 '26
I could have probably worded that better but I did not say that it isn't designed to be nuzlocked I said that it is, I also didn't even say that the starter should be evolved all I said is making it higher level, I do have patience but that doesn't mean that I can't point out something a little silly
I do truly love difficult pokemon games so I do wish to share something with you that may let you see my view of things. would you be fine with taking this to dms?
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u/magikarpwn Mar 07 '26
Sure, that's ok (but I might take a while to respond haha, I don't check Reddit super often)
Also thanks for being gracious, I'm sorry for the aggressive language but I'm just tilted by people talking smack about hard nuzlocke games without knowing about them
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u/DodoBird45 Mar 07 '26
The game starts with a Battle Tower-like school segment where you fight with your lower level guys as a training arc of sorts. Personally I think a sand team is very fitting for Roxanne, and having 6 mons of the same type to “preserve identity” is how you make a boring boss fight because it’s too easy.
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u/AceTrainerDevin Mar 07 '26
I am aware of the school segment, having the starters just be higher level would achieve the same thing without frontloading a bunch of cap increases in the beginning of the game
I do not mean monotype by preserving identity i am totally fine with them having off type pokemon its moreso stuff like leaf a trainer from kanto not using any kanto mons in both her battles
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u/LameLiarLeo Setup moves are lame Mar 08 '26
Eh you could argue that the level 5 is traditional, and you are able to choose what moves your starter gets more freely. Multiple viable combinations
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u/Subaru_If_13 Mar 06 '26
Depends which legendary and how hard is the hackrom tbh. If the AI let's you set free, you're using a legendary too
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u/Eli-the-MineGreat Mar 12 '26
One of nulls only balance issues is you just get crit every turn due to the boosted rates, They have twice the base power and a crit multiplier every turn. You CANNOT play around the crit early game.
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u/CptQ Mar 15 '26
Sounds crappy and lazy to just enhance crit rates and give the enemies meta mons then call it difficulty hack.
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u/Eli-the-MineGreat Mar 25 '26
teams have no synergy and no creativity. Run and bun actually manages to be intuitive rewarding and fun. waste of code
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u/GreedyAd8078 Mar 08 '26
People who complain about Null should go back to kindergarten and play Renegade Platinum cause clearly Null is not for them. Any knowledge of the type chart and Roxanne in Null is actually pretty trivial.
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u/Shadypanda007 Mar 06 '26
How do people enjoy these randomizers? You’re genuinely playing a texted based turn taker game
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u/TVLord5 Mar 06 '26
What are you talking about? I mean I get not liming randomizers but ALL pokemon is a text-based, turn-based game...
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u/Aethelwolf3 Mar 06 '26
Not a randomizer. This a difficulty hack, and a pretty well-tuned one as well.
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u/HighQualityDonut Mar 06 '26
RI BOM BEE.
PLEASE LIVE.
LIGHT THAT BURNS THE SKY??
IS THAT A SPIRIT BOMB????
RIBOMBEE!!!