Pokemon Glazed is a hack of Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire split into two regions.  Only the first region is finished and playable, but it has a complete plot, so it's like playing a full game.  The game took me 35 game time hours to complete, which is the average length of a Pokémon game.  Note that this game doesn't have a working in-game save function, so you'll have to do all your saving through save states.  Just as a little background information, I am a dedicated Pokémon fan and a frequent player of Pokémon hacks.  The things I look for in a Pokémon hack are new story and interesting additions or changes to the Pokémon games.  I really appreciate thoroughness and the feeling of a complete, new game.

Glazed is set, like many other Pokémon hacks, in a new region, this one called Tunod.  (It's donut backwards, as the NPC's will point out.  As far as I can tell, that's really the only explanation for the title of the game.)  But that's not where you start the game.  The first thing the game does is introduce the overarching plot with some purposefully vague explanation, promising more clarification later.  It's a good start to a game, and I appreciated it.  You then get ready to leave on your Pokémon journey, pick your starter, and head off to become a Pokémon Master, as per usual.  (Note: Many other players said that the game would not let them leave the lab even after picking a starter.  I did not have this problem.  I'm not sure what I did, but I can say that I talked to all of the NPC's in town and tried to leave town before entering the lab.)  The available Pokémon in this region are a hodgepodge mix from all five generations, so don't get your hopes up on finding a particular Pokémon until you've already seen one.  As you travel on your Pokémon journey, you meet the mysterious evil team up to mysterious evil things, a Pikachu that seems to really hate your guts for some reason, and also weird(er) things keep happening to you.

The plot of the game is refreshing at first, since you slowly figure out what's going on, but after the first few towns it gets very repetitive.  *Enter town, Gym Leader is missing, fight Evil Team instead, fight Gym Leader, get called to other town*.  Yes, every single town you walk into with a Gym has a missing Gym Leader when you first get there.  The game's creator uses this in order to direct you towards the main plot, but he uses the same method every time, and it gets boring and predictable quickly.  The final explanation of the plot is a bit of a letdown after all the mystery and buildup, but writing a good story is hard, so I'm just happy that the plot actually reached a climax and then concluded.

The difficulty of the game appears to be on a logarithmic scale.  The level jump between the first three or four gyms is considerable, and then there is no significant difference between the rest.  I was level grinding back when I only had two Pokémon, but by the time I had a full party of six mid-game I was just coasting with no difficulty at all.  The Elite Four has levels in the 40's, and the Champion has low 50's.  Since this game is supposed to have another region after this one, it sort of makes sense that the Elite Four isn't that hard (think like the Johto Elite Four in Gold/Silver).  Personally, I don't really like having to train that much while playing a hack since I'd rather be admiring the game, but I did expect more from Gym Leaders and Team leaders.  You don't have a regular rival in this game, instead having many quasi-rivals.  They tend to show up in inconvenient places, but like everyone else, they're never difficult.  Also, the recurring fights you have with Pikachu are what you would expect from fighting a Pikachu- as in, you only need to survive long enough to hit it twice.  The Pikachu is a cute character and all, but pretty mediocre as a pseudo-rival.

Aesthetically, the game is pretty nice.  The city design is great, and I really enjoyed the buildings and other scenery.  Routes are average-looking, but all of them are pretty short, which is convenient and cuts down on the tediousness of travel.   The Gen IV and V Pokémon sprites look good, but many redesigned Trainer sprites are a little messy.  Also, the female player character didn't have the right backsprite, which I found surprising for a complete game.  (Not enough female playtesters, I guess.)

There were a few features in this game that I liked that I hadn't seen before.  One was that every route had at least one trainer who would rebattle you as many times as you wanted if you talked to them again.  The levels of their Pokémon didn't change, so it was very useful if you just needed to train a bit for the next gym.  However, there was the case of one route where you were forced to rebattle the trainers whether you wanted to or not, and it was unavoidable if you were trying to get through.  Fortunately, there was no real reason to backtrack through that route to advance the game, but I was training there and wished I could have skipped the fights.  Another feature was a cute fossil game that let you collect all four available fossils for reviving later.  The problems with the game, though, were that it wasn't particularly challenging, and the four different objects you collected from it you then had to trade in for fossils.  So, your inventory filled up with both kinds of items, and you had to wait two more towns before you could turn the fossils into Pokémon and clear out your bag.  On a different topic, I found it very cute that the Elite Four members had Pokémon teams based around color instead of type.  It's funny and new, and also gives them slightly more balanced teams that are almost impossible to sweep with just one Pokémon.

The flow of the game is smooth, with the NPC's helpfully pointing you in the right direction after every gym.  You also receive all the HM's through the plot from NPC's, which I always appreciate.  (Nothing is worse than finding out that you missed an HM sitting in a cave somewhere three towns back.)  Other than the starter Pokémon glitch I mentioned earlier, the only other glitch I encountered was after I ran out of Safari Balls in the Safari Zone.  I got called out of the Zone and then was stuck in a wall.  Fortunately I had a recent save state.  Leaving the Safari Zone just by walking out was not a problem.

Overall, Pokemon Glazed is a very nice hack, especially for an unfinished one.  The NPC's walking around town offer some entertaining dialogue, some of it cute, some of it funny.  It seemed to me like nearly every NPC had an edited script.  Not everything they said was a hilarious joke, but they felt like they belonged in this hack instead of being ripped from the original game, so I applaud the creator for his thoroughness.  The proofreading on the dialogue was nearly flawless; I caught a few minor errors, but nothing too distracting.  Undoubtedly, the first half of the game is the superior half, both story-wise and difficulty-wise.  However, since the story starts interesting and does finish, it's worth playing through the whole game up until the end.  You will like this hack if you like an original story, talking to town people, and don't mind the lack of a challenge.  I am really looking forward to the second half of this game.

Dynastico : I;m so grateful for your review! Amazing and well detailed review. I gave a shout out of this to the creator of the game and said he's willing to make changes, thanks man~