Medical bills can be expensive, especially if you're an uninsured Pokémon Trainer. Can you imagine the damage a rogue Pikachu might cause if it got a little angsty, or a raging Rhydon standing on your foot? I have the NHS here in the UK, but they certainly don't in the Hoenn Region.
Oddly enough, it's not a Pokémon that causes any damage in this ROM hack, but a truck. After a truck accident causes you to find yourself in an obscene amount of medical debt, there's only one thing for you to do - take on the Pokémon League to earn enough money to pay all of your bills!
Pokémon Crippling Medical Debt Edition comes to us from a dev named GMars. Ok, it might not be the most catchy-named ROM hack of all time, but you can't knock it for originality! It's based on Pokémon Emerald, uses the battle mechanics from the Gen 9 games, and has a pretty solid difficulty level, though not technically Kaizo level. I guess it's designed to replicate the terror of having no money and being in debt, so it provides you a real challenge! And if you really want to give yourself a hard time, you can always Nuzlocke it.
All of the Pokémon up to Pecharunt are available to capture, which means every Pokémon in the National Pokedex can be caught. You'll be able to take advantage of Mega Evolutions, and you can use TMs as many times as you want. There are tonnes of other quality of life features like unlimited bag space and HMs being automatically used if you have the appropriate gym badges.
One other feature I like is the Pokédex showing you how to evolve each Pokémon and their full movesets - that's pretty handy! You can also heal your party four times outside of a battle between Pokémon Center visits... that tells you how difficult this game is!
I'll just list a few more cool features in bullet point form because otherwise I'll be here all day!
- Sleeping in your bed changes the time of day, allowing you to get Pokémon at different times.
- Repels keep Pokémon 7 levels higher than your lead Pokémon at bay.
- Relearn moves right from the party menu.
- Use an escape rope as many times as you want
- Evolve Pokémon without any trading.
- Mints can change a Pokémons nature.
Seriously, there are so many cool features to this game that, despite being a comedic take on the traditional formula, show that it's incredibly well put together! Head to Hackdex to find out more!
