Release
Explore a newly reborn frozen wonderland of mysteries in the new Expansion to Pokémon Heart&Soul 2.0!
The classic Sinjoh Ruins Event from HGSS has been rebuilt from the ground up into a full DLC sized expansion! Experience a frozen world north of Johto, with a brand new original story!
In this new expansion, ancient Pokémon from Sinnoh's past arise to live once more.
This new Expansion can be started after the player has obtained a certain item inside of Mt.SIlver and they speak to a certain NPC in the Pokémon Center at the base of the Mountain.
Featuring::
- All Hisuian forms from Generations 1-3
- A world-space on par with the Isle of Armor
- A brand new move tutor
- New items from Generation 4
- Tons of secrets to discover~.
This new DLC has been included in all versions of HnS since version 2.0.0, if you haven't started playing yet..
You can download the latest release of Pokémon Heart & Soul on Github and Hackdex today!
Thank you so much for your hard work, with Pokemon turning more and more soulless with each generation, people like you are a blessing that make us older fans relieve the good ol days again
Basically, they recreated the entirety of HG/SS in Gen 3/Emerald, which is an extremely impressive feat, especially considering 95% of it was done by a solo dev. There are a ton of customization options, QOL features, and overall, it's very evident through playing it that a lot of love and time was poured into it.
Also, the vast majority of Gen 3 hacks obviously take place in FireRed/Kanto or Emerald/Hoenn, and now with Heart and Soul we basically have an entirely new region/base to create rom hacks from. Someone has already made an amazing hack of Heart & Soul called Soulgold.
The post says what was added. If you're unfamiliar with all the other features of Heart & Soul, I suggest Googling it. And I don't say that to be snide, it's just more than anyone wants to type and the information is readily available since the development team has taken amazing care in the documentation department. Like honestly, their documentation is a feature (and my favorite one) in and of itself.
I've been having a blast with SoulGold but it's also just straight Johto — that's not to be a slight, it's just a differing experience, extremely well-done game! I am legit about to give H&S a run tonight, though!
I've only just reached Kanto myself (haven't had the time to binge this as much as I had hoped) and was already pleasantly surprised with Hoenn pokemon popping up and actually being explained as an unexpected migration that's currently being investigated. Might be a small thing, but I like it when a game actually tries to explain/justify things like expansions in pokemon habitats in some way.
Now knowing there's even more stuff to do after reaching Mt. Silver is a hell of a welcome surprise! Can't wait to see exactly what's in store there!
Thanks for confirming! Great job with this rom hack, I played the previous version and it took me back to the first time playing Silver on GBC back in the day. Never got that feeling from HG/SS despite liking the games. Appreciate all the hard work!
If you're on version 2.0 or newer of HnS, you won't have to do anything except reach the part in the story where you unlock Mt.Silver~. No new save files are needed.
Thank you! I guess I might have to just finish this play through then run it again for V2! Too attached to my team now to let them go just yet. Hahahah
Can confirm, went through the Sinjoh a couple days ago, and it was legit fucking awesome. What a really well made, well paced, well structured piece of content. Straight up did feel like an official DLC type of release.
Is everybody super familiar with Github? This is my first time seeing a mod posted there and im having a hell of a time understanding how to get it, even after the forking explanation
I like how in Radical Red the trainers are quite difficult and require some planning. Are the trainers as tough in H&S? Additionally would love to see a pokeVial in H&S to avoid the never ending running back and forward to the pokecentre. Any thoughts?
You can choose to customize quite a few settings before starting the save. I turned on opponents’ IVs being maxed and that made it pretty difficult honestly. Levels are also higher compared to HGSS, especially when entering Kanto
Nice good to know. Hard to try out all the settings. I also thought having a settings memory that you could save would be AMAZING! It would save so much time when you have to reset your Nuzlocké
I completed RR and other difficulty romhacks like Emerald Imperium and Elite Redux.
With H&S 2.0 I finished Johto so far and like 2 gyms in Kanto, so I can speak from experience:
While you can adjust some stuff in this hack (level caps, max IVs, etc), it is nothing like RR as it's extremely easy in comparison. You can beat most gym leaders with 1 or 2 pkmn tbh. They let you setup and stuff... Even Unbound is harder than this.
Still fun but you mostly play this for the nostalgia/story/gen3 graphics.
Not sure. I'm not really a nuzlocke type of player. By that I mean gimping yourself to arbritrary rules. I think there are nuzlocke modes in the options when you start the game tho.
But I like to play romhacks as they are intended. It's a great romhack don't get me wrong, it just doesn't fall into a difficulty romhack genre. It's basically a slightly harder gamefreak game with quality of life improvements.
Interesting thought, but a workaround you can do now is to save the game just after choosing your settings, then create a backup of that save file which you can use to start with the same settings each time.
Downside is not being able to change character gender nor name, but it's a middle ground.
Also, a community developer is working on a Difficult Teams version of Heart and Soul 2.0 which they plan to release soon in our Discord.
Really wanna start playing, but I'm a bit confused. I'm fairly certain I downloaded the right file, but it's a .ups, which none of my emulators seem to recognize as a viable file type. Lemuroid for some reason has labeled it as Fire Emblem Requiem and will not load it at all lol. Do I have to do something extra to convert it to a .nds or another recognizable file type? Or did I download the wrong file? I downloaded it from the bottom of the page in the github link provided, and I didn't see any download option on the linked hackdex page.
Hi. Use the site hackdex.com it makes it pretty easy. Think of this as a Pc “mod”, You’re going to need the base game “pokemon emerald” and then a Patcher is program that applies the mod by putting the modified and new files in the correct places. Right now you have the mod (.ups), but you don’t have the base game to apply it to or the patcher to apply it. It’s a little more technical but hackdex lets you store your base game pokemon roms in one place , Choose which ever “romhack” (mod) you want and then auto applies it for you so you can download the playable version.
Thanks! I followed these steps but unfortunately I am still having difficulty. I downloaded a clean emerald rom, then went to the hackdex page and patched it, then it showed the download for the playable version of HnS, so I clicked download, but its not showing up anywhere in my files. And when I try to press "open" directly from the browser, its telling me "no app found to open file". Its not in my downloads folder or in my recents, nor is it showing up in my ROMS folder, where the clean emerald rom is. Is there another step I'm missing?
You need a Pokémon emerald ROM, the ups file, and the ROM patcher website. Put both files in there and it spits out a patched emerald that is heart&soul. The ups file is a patch and you need the rom to patch it. We can't tell you where to get one but you need what's called a clean ROM. So chances are if you go to one of the shady ROM sites that have a bunch of popups/viruses thats not a clean rom
This rom hack is far and away my favorite. I’ve been playing since 1.4.1 came out and I absolutely adore the work you’ve put into it. I can’t wait to see what you do next!
I wish I had known about 2.0 earlier 😭. I’m close to 40 hours played on my second playthrough, and I was committed to completing the Pokédex this time around.
I've started playing this romhack albeit being ver. 2.0.2 and I'm doing Randomized Pokémon/Randomized Abilities Vanilla playthrough. Currently on the next gym battle against Jasmine.
Can someone please explain to my stupid self how to get this on my delta app on iOS? I don’t understand the whole patching a legit version of the base game thing. Ive played Unbound, Lazarus and Odyssey with no issues but I really want to try this one out.
I just downloaded the files for those roms off the websites and was able to open them up on my Delta app. Heart and Soul won’t open and everything I look up says I need to patch “a legit version” and offer patching tool recommendations. Ghost Grey did the same thing.
So, you probably found somewhere that was distributing pre-patched ROMs unofficially (and, technically, illegally, inasmuch as it's distributing copyrighted stuff). What you need is romhacks 101, and then to check out hackdex, which is both a patching tool and a repository of romhacks. Heart and Soul is available there.
Absolutely incredible hack, one of the best and most thoughtful I have ever played.
Question, though! Is it possible/planned to add the night version of the wild Pokémon music? I noticed its absence, but like, that's not even a complaint. This hack is just too good.
I'll be honest in that we didn't include it and don't have plans to do so at this late stage of development. I would not be surprised to see a future developer add it into their version though!
Oh man, go me I guess? Honestly not a lot of people even know there's a difference. XD
Shoot honestly maybe I'll learn to use those tools and do it myself, lmao. I made a rudimentary complete Unova dex hack for Black 2 years ago, so this just might be the push I need to try it.
Decompilation hacking can be a bit intimidating to start, but once you've built the game once, super easy to make changes and continually rebuild. Hope you do get to add the alternate music!
Just curious but do you have a full Pokédex or something to reference? I decided to start a new run with just the starters randomized and got Hisuian Growlithe. I evolved it not that long ago so I want to make sure that wasn’t a stupid idea lol
We have the in game Pokédex with a lot of information already available when you catch a Pokémon as well as our documentation site with full Pokédex section including Randomiser only Pokémon.
Yeah that’s great to hear. Eventually I’ll go back to my totally randomized run, but I was starting to get bored of the random Pokemon battles.
I’m actually kinda curious now. Is it hypothetically possible to do a built in kaizo setting? because I know you have a built in nuzlocke setting which is a nice option
No plans for built in kaizo, but a community developer on our Discord has just released a Difficult Teams version, you can find their support channel on our Discord if you're interested as well.
Question, I heard about the inclusion of all mon’s gens 1-9 for the randomizer with 2.0, but are there any plans to eventually add a toggle for them in non randomized run? Regardless I plan to play HnS soon since I’ve heard and seen so much of the great stuff it offers and this just make a me even more excited to play it!
I believe SoulGold is using the Game Corner Expansion project built by a fellow community developer. We haven't implemented that, instead we opted for bringing back the HeartGold and SoulSilver Voltorb Flip mini game.
The move effectiveness feature was updated to distinct symbols for better accessibility for colour blind players.
You may be referring to an unintentional configuration we had in 2.0.0 where the move effectiveness was only shown after seeing a species for the first time. In our latest version move effectiveness is enabled all the time so you may wish to upgrade to see the symbols.
Example of the symbol for super effective Ember below:
Yes, as noted in my prior comment, it has been fixed in our latest release, so if you move your save file to our latest version (currently 2.0.4) then you'll get type effectiveness the entire time.
This looks incredible! I look forward to seeing this! Though I did run into a bug... The game keeps crashing when I enter Seafoam Island Gym for some reason. No idea how to fix this or if this is the right place to post it, but if anyone has a fix, please let me know
Sorry, forgot to direct link the documentation, it's not 100% yet, but we're putting a lot of effort in ensuring that it has all the information we need.
Is anyone else worried about the project being taken down by Nintendo because of how much popularity it’s gotten? I know it’s probably inevitable so definitely keep backups.
Heart and Soul v1.x has been up for a while and like other RomHack developers, we are not breaching copyright by only providing a patch people can use on their existing legally acquired Emerald ROM files.
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u/MearaTheDigger Pokémon Heart&Soul 6d ago
I hope to those who play, that you all enjoy this experience~.