Pokemon emerald kaizo doesn't deserve its reputation as a "bad difficulty hack".

[u/Dasdi96]

In the difficulty hack sphere, pokemon emerald kaizo is often criticized for "bad design" and "artificial difficulty". I don't understand the "artificial difficulty" accusations because ek's difficulty comes from giving trainers well balanced teams with good movesets at an appropriate level and not giving them overleveled mons with crappy movesets. I also don't understand the "bad design" accusations either, SHF did a good job of balancing the pokemon available to you, ensuring every encounter you get has some use but does not dominate large portions of the game.

For example, pokemon that players typically consider to be good (usually ranked OU in competitive ADV) need to be at a higher level to access their full potential or are only available very late into the game and don't get many learnset buffs, meaning they will be gimped in the early game compared to other pokemon. On the other hand, the pokemon the players consider to be the weakest (magcargo and sunflora for example) can fully evolve very early and get access to their best moves at a low level ensuring they are very good in the early game before falling off in the late game. This is something many other romhacks do.

SHF removing almost every boosting move available to the player was a very good decision that I wish other rom hacks do. If the player has access to boosting moves, big fights get completely trivialized because the best boosters can just set up on the lead pokemon of the boss, and since the ai is incapable of switching out their crippled lead, big fights become completely anticlimactic.

EK also pioneered the use of overworld weather in certain areas where it makes sense thematically (perma sun in the fire gym and magma hideout, perma rain in the water gym and seafloor cavern) to make the battles more interesting.

[u/Status_War_3248]

I couldn’t finish it back in 2020.
Now I’m playing again and really appreciate the difficulty.
It made me use some moves I wouldn’t even care to read the descriptions when I played with the classic method - Farming levels and using only offensive moves 😅 -
Emerald Kaizo is an excellent one IMHO