## 2025-05-08 ![[Pokemon ROWE-1746893008763.jpg]] R.O.W.E stands for “Raquaza’s Open World Emerald,” basically what it sounds like. Like [[Pokemon Crystal Clear]], you pick a starting location and then collect 16 badges – 8 in Hoenn, 8 on the Sevii Islands, and a planned 8 in Kanto for 24 total whenever the 3.0 for this game comes out. This might be the coolest way I’ve ever experienced **Pokemon**, and I actually like it even more than **Crystal Clear**. It’s a little glitchier, but I like the Emerald engine that **R.O.W.E** uses, and the way that you get rewards for exploration with each Gym Leader you beat – like an axe that lets you cut down trees, for example. It makes exploration more interesting long-term. It also has every pokemon ever, as of writing this. Literally, from Gen 1 to Gen 9. There isn’t enough box space for all of them so the dev has a tool where you can upload your save file to an [itch.io](http://itch.io) app he made where you can box your mons like in Pokemon Home. Mad dedication. Also there are tons of fun modifiers. You can do all double-battles, increase/decrease the difficulty, randomize where pokemon appear, what kind of pokemon the gym leaders use, and more. And the usual QOL that exists in these romhacks is present here as well of course. I played for about 62 hours and collected almost 500 pokemon before calling it. It was an absolute blast, especially climbing way through the Elite Four and beating the Champion. I played on Normal difficulty, which is harder than a canon **Pokemon** game, and I was down to my Mawile on her last bit of HP before she clutched it out and officially claimed MVP status. Very exhilarating. It was also a ton of fun seeing all the pokemon I haven’t seen in the gens that came after **Pokemon Black & White**. Like I said: [[I Never Stopped Loving Pokemon]]. I just needed to approach it differently.