I have a few objective criteria for what makes a good Gym, and so far... I don't think you're gonna like those criteria, especially the main one. Criterium 1) Rule of Availability: does beating the gym give you access to places where you can find it? If not, then it's a bad gym. Reason 1) the secondary purpose of all gyms was to give us ideas that we could implement almost immediately after beating said gym. This makes Gligar a terrible pick for the flyjng tyoe gym (if anything Zubat makes much more sense). For example, Gligar doesn't nake any sense for the first gym in my book. If it has to have bats in the lineup, Zubat is a far better choice since there's a cave where you can get them before Violet (though you might want to put off going there until you have Flash). Or at least, that's what I would say if not for the second criteria. Criterium 2) matching the theme. This is obvious, if a gym leader (or other "important" trainer) has a particular theme to their area, then their pokemon should try to stay as close to that theme as physically possible. Reason 2) What's the point of giving your gyms a theme if you're not even gonna stay true to it? What's next, replacing the Kimono Girls' Eeveelutions showcase with pokemon that have no connection to each other at all? Swapping all the bellsprouts in sprout tower with random grass types you won't even be able to find until after the Elite Four? For example, like it or not the theme for Violet City's gym is explicitly birds. Murkrow fits that bill quite well, but because it's only found in Kanto (despite being a Gen 2 pokemon) I can't in good faith put it in Violet City. Criteriun 3) Teaching the Type. does it teach you how the gym's individual type actually works in relation to the player's team? If not then it's a bad gym Reason 3) the whole point of why gyms exist is to put into practice what you'd have read in passing about type interactions, with a specific focus on the gym's primary type. All good "first gyms" are monotype for this very reason. And this next one os technically optional for most games, but a requirement for Gen 2 Criteriun 4) If the current gym leader is canonically the successor of another gym leader, how well do they follow their predecessor's example? I'd say Janine is the definitive example of this done right since you can literally see between Gen 1 and Gen 2 how similar she and Koga operate when battling... If not their portrayals in adaprational material. Reason 4) this one is obvious... And also VERY important to consoder when you realize that gen 2 aw a whole is about successors. Falkner and Janine sicceed theor fathers as gym leaders, Blue succeeds Giovanni as Viridian's gym leader, the Rocket executives obviously succeed Giovanni as Team Rocket's leaders and we, the main character, are jot only the successor to Lance as Johto's champion but also Red in terms of being the peotagonist.
1. I don’t think that has been the case or the idea expressed in any game. Roark has a Cranidos, and I’m pretty sure the explorers kit is entirely optional. Brock showcases Geodude, which IS available in Mt. Moon, but Onix doesn’t become available until Rock Tunnel. Misty has the Starmie line, exclusively found through fishing. If you want to stick to Johto examples, Steelix, Gengar, and Kingdra are trade evolutions, and Poliwrath is reliant on a water stone, which is only through a specific phone call. I’d argue that it’s the opposite effect. You won’t see those Pokémon for a while, so you can associate them with the Gym Leaders, as opposed to coming across as simply using the common scraps of what’s lying around. The theme for Violet City, The City of Nostalgic Scents, is not birds. The only thing about birds is Falkner’s dialogue, which I acknowledged. Also, I don’t think Zubat compares to Pidgeotto in terms of difficulty. 2. I literally don’t understand your point to this. I made clever decisions based around the way the characters are established, look at what I did with Bugsy. I wasn’t going to make the Blackthorn Gym entirely dratini and horsea, that’s boring and stupid. I didn’t touch on this outside of mentioning that one bird keeper, but the dual typed gyms is applied to the trainers. Some of the skiers have dark types, the mediums have some fire types. I based the decision around the Gym Leader first. 3. Johto doesn’t teach the types, it simply uses some of the ones that Kanto doesn’t. If the flying gym is meant to teach type match-ups, why are two of the three starters neutrally effective, and the third is walled by the first two gyms? This point makes sense when facing Brock in Kanto, and I’d agree with you there, but this is Johto. 4. With the exception of the first gym, how are the changes I made to the gym leaders not reflective of the idea of “successors”? I literally put in interim Gym Leaders, a sort of “pseudo-successor”, and they share team members. Gym 7 i based around the team rocket plot that takes place there, and my personal gripes against Pryce’s role, or lack thereof. I’m fine with you disagreeing with my decisions, but I didn’t go into this trying to make “good gyms”. I wanted to make balanced game decisions to overcome some of the natural flaws that were apparent in the base game. I’d like to think I did a good job with that.
For your hack, since you're changing so many leaders go with changing the setting and map some too, maybe your player character is the kid of the original player character in an alternate universe type deal, instead of happening in '99 it happens in '25 or whenever you release the hack. I like your icon, he's neat.
It's called Crystal Mirror intentionally. It's more or less the same game, but the changes can constitute it as a "mirrored dimension". You hit the nail on the head with some of these ideas, but it's currently out of my wheelhouse to take it that far. This is still going to be one of those hacks that attempts to "fix" vanilla Crystal. The idea of changing the characters wasn't one of my main goals, the idea just sort of snowballed, and serves no real purpose other than for me to practice my game dev skills.
I find it a little disappointing that they decided to basically ignore and hide one of the more interesting fighting types in this game. Neither bugsy or chuck make use of heracross
I didn’t want bugsy to have both Scyther and heracross, so I gave heracross to one of the gym trainers in azalea. Plus, I did give it to Bruno in the E4
@@PotatoBagel23 I was leaning towards gamefreak/nintendo with my statement. Such a cool regional bug pokemon that I honestly wouldnt know about if it wasnt for the pokemon anime. I cant recall a single trainer who had it in GSC
I have a few objective criteria for what makes a good Gym, and so far... I don't think you're gonna like those criteria, especially the main one.
Criterium 1) Rule of Availability: does beating the gym give you access to places where you can find it? If not, then it's a bad gym.
Reason 1) the secondary purpose of all gyms was to give us ideas that we could implement almost immediately after beating said gym. This makes Gligar a terrible pick for the flyjng tyoe gym (if anything Zubat makes much more sense).
For example, Gligar doesn't nake any sense for the first gym in my book. If it has to have bats in the lineup, Zubat is a far better choice since there's a cave where you can get them before Violet (though you might want to put off going there until you have Flash). Or at least, that's what I would say if not for the second criteria.
Criterium 2) matching the theme. This is obvious, if a gym leader (or other "important" trainer) has a particular theme to their area, then their pokemon should try to stay as close to that theme as physically possible.
Reason 2) What's the point of giving your gyms a theme if you're not even gonna stay true to it? What's next, replacing the Kimono Girls' Eeveelutions showcase with pokemon that have no connection to each other at all? Swapping all the bellsprouts in sprout tower with random grass types you won't even be able to find until after the Elite Four?
For example, like it or not the theme for Violet City's gym is explicitly birds. Murkrow fits that bill quite well, but because it's only found in Kanto (despite being a Gen 2 pokemon) I can't in good faith put it in Violet City.
Criteriun 3) Teaching the Type. does it teach you how the gym's individual type actually works in relation to the player's team? If not then it's a bad gym
Reason 3) the whole point of why gyms exist is to put into practice what you'd have read in passing about type interactions, with a specific focus on the gym's primary type.
All good "first gyms" are monotype for this very reason.
And this next one os technically optional for most games, but a requirement for Gen 2
Criteriun 4) If the current gym leader is canonically the successor of another gym leader, how well do they follow their predecessor's example? I'd say Janine is the definitive example of this done right since you can literally see between Gen 1 and Gen 2 how similar she and Koga operate when battling... If not their portrayals in adaprational material.
Reason 4) this one is obvious... And also VERY important to consoder when you realize that gen 2 aw a whole is about successors. Falkner and Janine sicceed theor fathers as gym leaders, Blue succeeds Giovanni as Viridian's gym leader, the Rocket executives obviously succeed Giovanni as Team Rocket's leaders and we, the main character, are jot only the successor to Lance as Johto's champion but also Red in terms of being the peotagonist.
1. I don’t think that has been the case or the idea expressed in any game. Roark has a Cranidos, and I’m pretty sure the explorers kit is entirely optional. Brock showcases Geodude, which IS available in Mt. Moon, but Onix doesn’t become available until Rock Tunnel. Misty has the Starmie line, exclusively found through fishing. If you want to stick to Johto examples, Steelix, Gengar, and Kingdra are trade evolutions, and Poliwrath is reliant on a water stone, which is only through a specific phone call. I’d argue that it’s the opposite effect. You won’t see those Pokémon for a while, so you can associate them with the Gym Leaders, as opposed to coming across as simply using the common scraps of what’s lying around. The theme for Violet City, The City of Nostalgic Scents, is not birds. The only thing about birds is Falkner’s dialogue, which I acknowledged. Also, I don’t think Zubat compares to Pidgeotto in terms of difficulty.
2. I literally don’t understand your point to this. I made clever decisions based around the way the characters are established, look at what I did with Bugsy. I wasn’t going to make the Blackthorn Gym entirely dratini and horsea, that’s boring and stupid. I didn’t touch on this outside of mentioning that one bird keeper, but the dual typed gyms is applied to the trainers. Some of the skiers have dark types, the mediums have some fire types. I based the decision around the Gym Leader first.
3. Johto doesn’t teach the types, it simply uses some of the ones that Kanto doesn’t. If the flying gym is meant to teach type match-ups, why are two of the three starters neutrally effective, and the third is walled by the first two gyms? This point makes sense when facing Brock in Kanto, and I’d agree with you there, but this is Johto.
4. With the exception of the first gym, how are the changes I made to the gym leaders not reflective of the idea of “successors”? I literally put in interim Gym Leaders, a sort of “pseudo-successor”, and they share team members. Gym 7 i based around the team rocket plot that takes place there, and my personal gripes against Pryce’s role, or lack thereof.
I’m fine with you disagreeing with my decisions, but I didn’t go into this trying to make “good gyms”. I wanted to make balanced game decisions to overcome some of the natural flaws that were apparent in the base game. I’d like to think I did a good job with that.
For your hack, since you're changing so many leaders go with changing the setting and map some too, maybe your player character is the kid of the original player character in an alternate universe type deal, instead of happening in '99 it happens in '25 or whenever you release the hack.
I like your icon, he's neat.
It's called Crystal Mirror intentionally. It's more or less the same game, but the changes can constitute it as a "mirrored dimension". You hit the nail on the head with some of these ideas, but it's currently out of my wheelhouse to take it that far. This is still going to be one of those hacks that attempts to "fix" vanilla Crystal. The idea of changing the characters wasn't one of my main goals, the idea just sort of snowballed, and serves no real purpose other than for me to practice my game dev skills.
@@PotatoBagel23 Neat!
Gold : well,i'll beat kid's before elite four
Um, Gengar’s evolution isn’t level based, so it’s not illegally leveled if he has a valid Haunter.
This isn’t my first video on this series. In a previous one, I mentioned fixing trade evolutions.
@@PotatoBagel23 Gotcha. Sorry, blame the algorithm. 😋
Nice vid
thanks, i grew it myself
Sontus vir?
I find it a little disappointing that they decided to basically ignore and hide one of the more interesting fighting types in this game. Neither bugsy or chuck make use of heracross
I didn’t want bugsy to have both Scyther and heracross, so I gave heracross to one of the gym trainers in azalea. Plus, I did give it to Bruno in the E4
@@PotatoBagel23 I was leaning towards gamefreak/nintendo with my statement. Such a cool regional bug pokemon that I honestly wouldnt know about if it wasnt for the pokemon anime. I cant recall a single trainer who had it in GSC
How did u know I'm a goblin wth
wizard magic
Wait, the bug gym leader is a guy? I always thought it was a girl..