This review is an "in-depth" review of the Pokemon Ruby romhack, Pokemon Light Platinum. I'm a little strict and maybe biased when reviewing games, so take this with a grain of salt.

Let's get this out of the way first, this is a romhack. It's not something made by a huge company. However, this romhack IS pretty well made. There's no doubting that. With all 600-something pokemon intact, plenty of rivals to battle, a new story to dive into, and many more things.. This romhack is probably amazing, right?

..Well, that's when my review comes into play. I don't play a LOT of romhacks (Just some), but I have played a lot of the Pokemon games from the 1st generation to the 4th generation. (I haven't experience the 5th generation quite yet.)
So I will be comparing this romhack to the regular Pokemon games.. It's probably not fair on paper, but this CAN be compared to them at a degree.

As for how far I've gotten through the game, all eight badges were collected. Just wanted to verify this before claims that I didn't reach the first gym or something like that. Anyway, the review begins.

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Graphics:

When it comes to graphics, it really excels with flying colors. Wesley FG (The person who made it) did a really great job making his own region and makes it almost feel like it's a mysterious region never to be seen by Pokemon players. As for the "new" pokemon, both the Gen 4 and Gen 5 pokemon look exactly as they did in their own respective games. It's worthy of praise.

I have seen some minor glitches throughout my playthrough of Light Platinum, but you can't always be perfect.

The graphics gets a 9. To the untrained eye, you could mistake this for a REAL Pokemon game.. However.. There's a lot more to cover other than graphics.

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Sound:

The music is the same as Pokemon Ruby's. There's no denying that. I'm not really a fan of the Gen 3 music, but it seems to fit right in for this romhack. There are some areas with silence, which is questionable.. But it's passable.

The sound effects are about the same as well, except for the new pokemon noises. Frankly, I saw this as a little lazy because of re-using different pokemon noises.. But what else can you do with a romhack?

Sound gets a 8. If there were less silent moments, it would definitely be a solid 9. You really can't mess up with the sound in a romhack, unless the sound is completely distorted and loud.. Thankfully, it wasn't.

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Addictiveness:

This is kind of hard to rate, because I was playing this in short bursts. After around 15-20 hours and getting the last badge, it gets really repetitive at some points. Specifically anything to do with the Team Rocket-esque group that was included with this romhack was painful to go through. This is because some of the members were using the same exact pokemon lineup. (Makes sense if it's a standard rule code for them, but it feels a little lazy.)

Another thing to mention is that there are TOO many rival encounters. I can understand having at least two rivals, but.. There are more rivals than that amount. It just feels more of a chore to fight them and not as surprising when these rivals come out of nowhere. (This is probably a complaint from a bitter man, but it was frustrating.)

The reason why I'm adding these two nitpicks is because it really affects replayability for me. Too many rival encounters really stagnates the game experience.. And that's not good.

Addictiveness gets a 6. Light Platinum is more fun when you progress through the game, but it gets pretty rough early on. (If you pick any pokemon other than a Fire type, that is.)

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Story:

This is the part of Light Platinum that can be considered as awful. I can understand making a romhack is hard and coming up with a half decent story can be hard as well.. But Light Platinum's story is really amateur-ish. I can understand this romhack's story appealing to certain people, but the lack of substance is awfully noticable to me.

One major problem I have with the story is that your character talks and acts on his/her own accord. Something that a real Pokemon game doesn't do. It feels like he isn't your "character", but just a major character to the story who acts on his own.. With a name you chose for him/her.
scripted events like these ruin any immersion present and makes the romhack degrade in quality.. But that's not the end of it.

As for the "villains", the Team Rocket-esque group is REALLY pathetic by "evil" standards. Their motive in the game is clear, but generic. There's one specific moment that they take over a museum-type area and they're completely ignored by the general public. That's just funny.
As for some of the Team Rocket-esque group's leaders.. They're okay. Later, one of the first leaders are almost like denounced to grunt status. I say this because there's one area that has everyone saying the same thing after defeat, including that leader as well.

Let's talk about the rivals, there's around 4 or 5 rivals total in this game. (I wasn't keeping track. Apologies.) Some of them are important due to their own positions of power.. But when you get a rival encounter after every 30-60 minutes, it starts to get really old. Most of the time, they fight you just for the sake of fighting you. Thankfully, there are breaks from rivals ever so often.
There is a reason why the regular Pokemon games do not have a lot of rivals in their games: It's because it ruins the surprise with rivals. Rivals are meant to be surprising. This dates back to the original rival, Blue.

Here's one last problem with the story.. It's predictable. Very predictable. You start to notice something after the third or fourth gym, you always have to find the gym leader for whatever reason. I don't recall this happening as often in the regular Pokemon games. (Or any other romhack I've played for that matter.) So this can become really repetitive at times.

Story gets a 4. It's really hard to find anything of praise for the story.. It's easily the weakest part of Light Platinum and could use a LOT of improvement.

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Depth:

Now the depth. It's at a decent length, but there's a lot of places to cover in Light Platinum. Lots of cities to go to and lots of routes to take. Many pokemon to catch.. You can literally play this game for a long time with no problem. It's faithful to the regular Pokemon games.

Depth gets a 8, the reason is because some areas take a bit longer than they need to. (I'm looking at you, routes!)

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Difficulty:

Here's something that caught me by surprise. If you don't pick a fire type as a starter, Light Platinum is pretty difficult early on.. REALLY difficult. Normally I never say that, but it's apparent that Light Platinum is addicted to bug and grass types.. This is also a bad thing.
The reason why the influx of bug/grass types is bad is because of status effects. Poison, paralyze, sleep.. The way to fix that would be getting Antidotes and such as a counter.. That is until you realize the shops only carry Hyper Potions and Full Heals. You know, those things that cost a lot of money.

This.. Is the other fault to Light Platinum. There is VERY little to spend money on. Early shops only carry expensive items such as Ultra Balls, making catching pokemon not only expensive, but almost mandatory depending on your situation.
Thankfully, there are some NPCs that give you different pokemon. (Sometimes, they know your name as well!) Making Light Platinum a bit easier, but it's still difficult.
It's almost offensive later, as you get access to Great Balls and even the basic Antidotes and Paralyze Heals. I don't really know what's worse, the previous paragraph or this.

The gym leaders are generally easy, if you're prepared.. Up until the 8th gym leader, which requires high levelled pokemon to compete.

Difficulty is a 7. Light Platinum CAN become a difficult game early on, but the midgame is smooth sailing for the most part. Late game requires a bit of grind.

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Verdict: 7.8

Light Platinum is a well made romhack and it shows. However, the faults present in the romhack drags it down a bit. I recommend Light Platinum for the depth and catching them all. However, I do NOT recommend Light Platinum for the story, as it's not well written at all.

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In a nutshell / TL;DR : Light Platinum is good, but the story isn't.

Such a long and detailed review! I've played this game and beaten it, not to mention made a review of it myself! Good job!

Pokemon Platinum and Pokemon Light Platinum , aren't they the same game with different story lines and different starter but they're good pokemon game anyway .

supercool22 : I haven't tried out the Pokemon Platinum romhack yet, but it looks different from Light Platinum. Will have to try it out sometime.

Great review Pokemon light platinum is my favorite Pokemon hack of all time

liquidmk : I feel that you missed some thing in your review, so here you go...

Enemy Trainers have TOO MANY POKEMON!!! Seriously having to face 5 trainers in the middle of a cave is bad enough, but what is criminal is, the battles are forced, they each have 6 POKEMON, and they have the same team. The Event Glitches...Well if you actually played through this entire mess you'll notice these ungodly glitches appear quite often. The Best Example is with team steam in the 2nd region. THE SAME EVENT HAPPENS EVERY TIME YOU GO THROUGH THE AREA!!!Stupid Legendary Events (or not): Putting every legendary in the series in one game is stupid. It's a boring filler.Not being able to fly to all the towns in the second region: Speaks for itself.

supercool22 : From another post I saw Pokémon Platinum is the unfinished version of Light Platinum but I don't know for sure

Great review, I especially love the 'Verdict' section and it is giving your final opinion on the game which I like and have never seen before, so you are already bringing something new to reviews!

I like this review, it is long and detailed which makes it perfect, I like your descriptiveness in this review, excellent work on this review and you kept it neat and easy to read which is really good as well. I have played this game and I reviewed it and I think that you did and excellent job with reviewing this game. Wesley really did do a great job with this game and I really did enjoy playing it as well. You really did an excellent job with this review. It is the perfect length and I like your descriptiveness, thoroughness and good reasoning for the scoring of this game as well, overall a job well done, great work and keep it up, keep writing and keep making more reviews!