For the most part, I had a really good time with this hack. The story was increasingly engaging and well-paced, and I enjoyed how it built upon the lore of the original game, while working around what was already there, and not arbitrarily blocking you off from a sizeable chunk of the core Fire Red experience just to make things make sense.
As I learned throughout my playthrough, this game is not the best when it comes to a pure gameplay experience, at least in terms of quality of life or actual Pokémon gameplay. Your "choices" in this game boil down to two options: steal as much as possible, or steal as little as possible, and the rewards for both are extremely disproportionate. If you steal from everyone, you get a multitude of Pokémon to fool around with, which compensates nicely for how absolutely miserable it is to grind and level up in this game. Seriously, getting anywhere substantial with a single Pokémon takes ages. I had a level 7 Eevee get XP from a level 40+ Pokémon that was knocked out, and it gained two levels. I don't know why XP was so nerfed in this game, but it really increases the pressure to rely on stealing.
Meanwhile, if you choose not to steal any Pokémon, you get much better rewards, and have to rely on more conventional means of catching and levelling up Pokémon, in doing so subjecting yourself to a world of grinding and actively neglecting the main gimmick of the game. Unfortunately, this dichotomy, while certainly interesting, only serves to diminish BOTH moral directions for the game, feeling like two halves of a full experience.
There are other, smaller issues, too, like how handing in Pokémon to the police or selling them on the black market is wildly disproportionate to how high their level is, for no real reason other than to make your life more difficult, and it just makes trying to make the most of both ends of the game an insurmountable task.
Meanwhile, on the brighter side of things, again, the utilisation of recurring characters is excellent, I really enjoy the custom sprite-work such as the design of the main character, the adult humour and mature themes is all pretty tasteful for the most part and never feels over the top or inappropriate, the integration of MissingNo was genius, and the whole third act of the game genuinely had me hyped.
I do echo the common opinion that the post-game is quite disappointing, being limited to catching legendaries, which I presume to be non-canon, and completing side quests that aren't actually POST-game content, they're just available afterwards. I'll extend this criticism to say that I feel like the ending was generally pretty unsatisfying as a whole; I enjoyed the teases for the future, but the whole plot doesn't really amount to anything meaningful, and the story stumbles a little in its efforts to wrap everything up as neatly as what came before it. The more I think about it, the more it just feels like a long-winded explanation to say "this didn't work here, but it does work in G/S/C!" This would be fine, but it means all of the build-up and tension we feel relies on a very old game that was never actually made with such complexity in mind. It's left to our imaginations in the most frustrating ways possible.
The absence of the Sevii Islands was a shame, I'm quite fond of those in design and concept (I really enjoy legendary quests, and some extra Team Rocket content to bridge the gap between their ending and G/S/C would've been nice), but if I were to suggest one particular element from the original FRLG's post-game to be restored, it would be the VS Seeker. Considering how stealing works in this game, as well as money AND XP, having the ability to rematch any trainer, perhaps only once each, would make a world of difference to the experience, and really expand the potential for this game to be a proper, full Pokémon game of its own, not just a new story set during the events of FRLG, with some obligatory game design and a fun gimmick idea.
This is the first Pokémon Hack I have ever played to completion, or even played a substantial amount of. I've always known the official games were a lot slower than the fan-games, so admittedly, after being accustomed to a significantly sped-up experience on that end of the pond, playing this really tested my patience. Of course, you can fast-forward, but unlike in fan-games, that also speeds up the music and the sound effects, which not only makes it grating but incredibly immersion-breaking. It doesn't feel like I'm playing the game at my preferred pace, it literally just feels like I fast-forwarded. That said, this was a great impression of what can be achieved differently or uniquely through hacks, and was certainly a fun time in its own right. I will remember this game fondly as the hack that inspired me to broaden my horizons of Pokémon fan creations.
