Unbound vs SoulGold vs Radical Red: which should you play first?

The short answer

Play Unbound first if you want the most complete package: an original region, an original story, 84 missions, a Battle Frontier, and a difficulty you choose. Play SoulGold first if Johto is the draw and you want every Mega, boss legendaries and a Hard mode that stays fair. Play Radical Red first only if you want difficulty, because that’s what it’s built for. The Kanto story is left as it was.

I finished Unbound and SoulGold, postgames included. I haven’t finished Radical Red, so what I say about it is from reading up on it, not from playing it through. It’s sitting on my list as the one I’m a little scared of.

Side by side

	Pokémon Unbound	Pokémon SoulGold	Pokémon Radical Red
Creator	Skeli	rahtak	soupercell, with koala4 on balance
Base	FireRed, CFRU and DPE (binary hack)	Emerald, pokeemerald-expansion (decomp)	FireRed, CFRU and DPE (binary hack)
Region and story	Borrius, original story	Expanded Johto, Johto story plus new questlines; no Kanto	Kanto and the Sevii Islands, FireRed’s story unchanged
Pokémon	Gen 1 to 7 (809) plus 96 Gen 8 Special Encounters	702 Pokédex entries; 959 species and forms incl. 118 Megas	Up to Gen 9 including DLC Pokémon, “with some exceptions”
Megas and other gimmicks	49 Mega Stones after Tarmigan Mansion; Z-Moves; Dynamax raids	All 118 Megas with type-generic stones; all 18 type Gems at the Indigo Plateau Gem Merchant; no Z-Moves or Dynamax	Megas, 17 of them custom; Z-Moves; Dynamax raids
Difficulty options	Vanilla, Difficult, Expert, Insane; lowerable mid-game	Normal or Hard (Hard = Doubles gyms and Elite Four with tougher teams); switch any time in Options	Standard play plus Hardcore Mode and Minimal Grinding Mode
Level caps	Capped Exp. Share: 15 to 66 on Vanilla, 20 to 75 on Difficult and above, lifted at Champion	12 to 70 by badge; None, Soft or Hard enforcement	Soft cap tied to the next boss
Starters	Larvitar, Beldum, Gible at level 10	Nine, from Chikorita to Sprigatito, at level 5	Not confirmed
Length	Main story, 84 missions, large postgame; no official hour count	Eight-badge Johto plus a facility-heavy postgame	FireRed-length Kanto, playable to the first Elite Four challenge
Documentation	Official Google Sheets, DPE data files, two large community wikis	Generated docs site with full Pokédex, encounters, trainers and TMs; in-game Docs button	Official Drive docs, a Radical Red Pokédex site, a Showdown server and calculator
Status	Complete; last patch 2.1.1.1, November 2022; postgame listed at 90 percent	Complete with postgame; v1.2 on 3 October 2026, 1.2.1 fixes on 21 October	4.1 released 22 March 2024; thread still says beta
Emulators	mGBA; avoid No$GBA, Eclipse, JohnGBA, old VBA and Delta	mGBA; built-in accuracy check; supported list on Hackdex	mGBA, VBA, OpenEmu fine; not Eclipse, PizzaBoy or Twilight Menu

Unbound and Radical Red run on the same engine, Skeli and ghoulslash’s CFRU and DPE. That’s why the battles feel alike, and why Radical Red’s Hardcore Mode borrows from Unbound Insane. SoulGold is a decomp project, so it can ship three fix batches in one month while the other two sit on 2022 and 2024 builds.

Pick Unbound if you want a finished world

Unbound is still the first hack I tell people to play. I finished it and immediately wanted to start a second save. Borrius is an original region with a story about a sealed dark force and the Shadows who want it back. You get 84 missions in a log, a four-facility Battle Frontier, and an 809-Pokémon Gen 1 to 7 dex in one save. The November 2022 patch, 2.1.1.1, is stable. Every Pokémon and every mission is gettable, even though Cube Corp. never got an interior.

The best part here is that you pick the difficulty. Choose Vanilla, Difficult, Expert or Insane at the start. You can always lower it, and New Game+ lets you change it freely. Turn on Capped Exp. Share if you want level caps, 20 to 75 on Difficult and above. Your first save can’t pick Insane at all, and Skeli built that mode to be unfair. I was relieved, not annoyed, when I saw it greyed out.

It shows its age in two spots. Gen 8 is bolted on through DexNav Special Encounters after you register a Galar Pokémon, and seven of them only come by trade through Unbound Cloud. And the soundtrack makes fast-forward lag on some emulators. Neither one ruined my run. The Unbound review tells you which mode to start on.

Pick SoulGold if Johto is the point

SoulGold is Johto rebuilt on pokeemerald-expansion from the Heart & Soul remake’s maps, then made bigger. You get the Vajra Desert, Snowtop Mountain, Kitakami, the South Johto Sea and more, all on a new tileset, and no Kanto. There are 702 dex entries, and all 608 non-legendaries are catchable. Every Mega is in, with 18 type-generic stones. Legendaries are boss fights with two to four health bars and mid-fight form changes, and you catch them for sure when you win. Those multi-bar legendary fights are the reason I kept telling friends about it.

It has the clearest difficulty setup of the three. Pick Normal or Hard. Hard gives gyms and the Elite Four tougher teams and makes them Doubles. Level caps are a separate switch, None, Soft or Hard, running 12 to 70 by badge. Trainer and wild scaling are extra toggles.

I played Hard with Hard caps. I lost gyms I’d have walked through on Normal, but a balanced team with two switch-ins per leader always got me through. Falkner opens his Hard team with a Tailwind Rufflet, so you know what you’re in for early.

It’s only three months out of beta. v1.2 came out 3 October 2026, with fixes on 8, 16 and 21 October. Saves only carry forward, not back. There’s a built-in emulator accuracy check, and the author won’t take bug reports from unsupported emulators. If you want a game that won’t change under you, play Unbound. I liked checking the patch notes every week, but I get why some people won’t. The SoulGold review covers what’s still rough.

Pick Radical Red if difficulty is the point

Radical Red is a difficulty hack first, with a lot of extra features to help you deal with that difficulty. Think Drayano hacks. FireRed’s story is untouched. What changed is everything around the battles. You get almost every Pokémon up to Gen 9, including the DLC Pokémon added in 4.1, plus Megas, Z-Moves, Dynamax raids, a soft level cap tied to the next boss, and tools that expect you to build teams instead of grinding levels. Seventeen of its Megas aren’t in the main games. You get Mega Stones from overworld pickups, gym leader rematches and challenges, and NPCs, and some only after the Mega Ring.

The two modes tell you who it’s for:

• Minimal Grinding Mode gives perfect IVs, removes EVs and blocks trading, so there’s nothing to grind.
• Hardcore Mode, added in 4.1, mixes in some Kaizo and some Unbound Insane. It restricts weather and stat-boosting moves, adds required minibosses, and turns Minimal Grinding on for you.

There’s a Showdown server with its balance changes and a damage calculator. That tells you how seriously it expects you to play. It’s the hack my friends dare each other to finish, and that reputation is exactly why I haven’t started it yet.

I’d put its standard mode above Unbound Difficult and SoulGold Hard, about level with Unbound Expert. Hardcore sits with Unbound Insane. It’s playable through the first Elite Four plus some postgame events, it’s still labeled a beta, and 4.1 from March 2024 is the latest. It won’t run on Eclipse, PizzaBoy or Twilight Menu. I haven’t finished it, so take this as a read of the official thread, not a review.

How the difficulty ladders line up

Easiest to hardest:

1. SoulGold Normal with Hard caps
2. Unbound Difficult
3. SoulGold Hard
4. Unbound Expert or Radical Red standard
5. Unbound Insane or Radical Red Hardcore, when losing is part of the plan

I placed Unbound and SoulGold from playing them, and SoulGold Hard was the spot where I first had to sit down and plan. Radical Red’s spot comes from how it’s designed and the tools it gives you.

Each one makes fights hard in its own way. Unbound scales bosses to your best Pokémon from Difficult up and limits items per trainer battle: four on Difficult and Expert, none on Insane. SoulGold doesn’t scale bosses unless you turn trainer scaling on, never limits items, and gets its difficulty from Doubles gym teams and the cap. Radical Red leans on competitive teams and a soft cap, and Hardcore adds move restrictions. The full ranking with twenty-odd other hacks is in ROM hacks by difficulty.

Documentation and setup

SoulGold is the easiest to look things up for. Its docs site has the Pokédex, encounters, trainer teams, TMs and item locations, and there’s an in-game Docs button that checks for updates. Unbound has four Google Sheets and two big community wikis. Radical Red has a Drive folder, a Pokédex site and a Showdown setup, which is plenty, just spread out. I lived in SoulGold’s docs tab more than I’d like to admit.

Use mGBA for all three, and don’t use cheats in any of them. Radical Red won’t take bug reports from cheated saves, and cheats can corrupt a SoulGold save. Setup is covered in how to play a ROM hack.

Verdict

Start with Unbound. It’s finished, it’s stable, you pick the difficulty, and nothing else on the GBA puts an original region, a mission system, a Frontier and 809 Pokémon in one save.

Play SoulGold next. I think it’s the better pure Pokémon game, and it’s the one I’d replay tomorrow. Boss legendaries, Doubles gyms and the full Mega list are real design ideas, and the Johto postgame is basically a second game.

Save Radical Red for when you want to be tested, not entertained. It’s still a beta, and I’m recommending it from what I’ve read, not from a finished run. The best ROM hacks list shows where all three land.