A Guide to Pokemon Crystal Clear
Crystal Clear, the romhack with a love-hate audience, is a game that since it came out has grown in a lot of different aspects. The community around it is still growing and the game is always changing.
It is a Pokemon romhack that borrows mechanics from a lot of romhacks that came before. It takes out the barriers that you saw in Pokemon Crystal and lets you blaze your own trail.
Pokemon Crystal Clear rewards you when you explore and not all those secrets are given in the documentation. My personal bias aside, it has many features that players have enjoyed.
Differences and Features
Crystal Clear is a Pokemon romhack that borrows ideas from other games, mostly Megaman. The sword is an item that allows cutting those annoying trees without the CUT HM, a great mechanic borrowed from a very familiar game. UI elements, recreated from Megaman, are used for the starter pokemon select screen. Even beta systems were borrowed! The sliders you use to customize your character are taken from early gen2 versions. As you explore, you’ll even find references to other games, including Half-Life.
People complain about mechanics not being what you see in other pokemon romhacks, but many of the choices people don’t like are made due to other users’ feedback.
The many quality of life changes that you see are features that you don’t always find in every hack. Crystal Clear is a nice blend of inconvenient and convenient, allowing you to breed your perfect Pokemon easily, but not have everything at hand too easily.
An “Official” Crystal Clear Guide
For recommendations, or a “guide” of sorts, remember that it is now your adventure. There is no story holding you back from jumping into the level 40 areas with your level five starter. You can grab a few legendaries before even hitting a gym too.
Oh, another suggestion, always hit SELECT on that Pokemon in the party screen you want to follow you, it’ll grow to be happier with you.
That’s my “official” Crystal Clear guide.
In the end, I personally enjoy Crystal Clear. It’s a Pokemon romhack that spoils you upfront, and once you get used to it, it can make playing the vanilla games or other Pokemon romhacks a bit more of a hurdle to start mentally. Like it, hate it, a lot of people still play it. And don’t forget to read the documentation for Crystal Clear and join the discord to share your adventures.
#ReadTheDocs
