Time has been fairly kind to generation 3. While at the time it felt like more of the same, just bigger and prettier - it now feels like a pleasantly polished Pokémon adventure with its gameplay still very rooted in the series origins.
Lots of distractions in farming ash for flutes, Pokémon beauty contests, pokeblocks, secret hideouts. Not all to my tastes, but they make the world feel distinct and more alive.
My taste here might be clouded by a sweet-spot in my nostalgia, but if anything I've grown fonder of this generation as years go by.

Foi o primeiro pokemon q joguei ent claramente tem um lugar especial, conhecer Hoenn e o sistema de batalha dos jogos pela primeira vez foi algo incrível. Torchic foi meu primeiro pokémon.

>> Prós
• SOUNDTRACK : Acho o game de pokémon com as melhores músicas de cidades, bate a nostalgia ao ouvir Littleroot Town.
• BRENDAN E MAY : São 2 ótimos protagonistas para se escolher.
• DESIGN CIDADES.
• JOGABILIDADE.

>> Contras
• Nenhum.

>> Perso Favorito = Brendan e Steven.

Pokemon Ruby is a cool video game.
I think it might actually be my favorite Pokemon game, which is weird cause for the longest part of my life I always considered it kind of like the black sheep of the series in a way.
But after this most recent playthrough I found so much to enjoy here - all the new monsters are so cool and fun, it's so easy to just pick 6 favorites and go to town with them because of how much the game's constantly throwing at you, a stark contrast to its predecessors which would often hide some of the more appealing Pokemon behind ludicrous or time consuming requirements.

One thing I really want to highlight about this game is the world itself, in a lot of ways Pokemon Ruby feels like the most fantastical Pokemon game.
It's very easy for the world in Pokemon to feel relatively small and compact, you always know you're never too far away from civilization so the games never tend to stop feeling like you're just a kid playing around the outskirts of town.
In Pokemon Ruby though, while the game does start out feeling like this, it quickly throws you into a bunch of cool and out there locales that really makes you feel like you're going on an adventure, from a town built on the back of a volcano, to a small civilization living in tree huts in the middle of a rainforest, to a city built around a giant coral reef in the middle of the ocean housing a great legendary being underneath - this game takes Pokemon from an urban fantasy to, well, a full on fantasy, and it really helps with the way the story this time focuses way more on myths, legends and powerful god-like creatures rather than the petty material conquests of the past games.
The whole game just has this really cool and mystical vibe that I think complements Pokemon incredibly well.
I know part of the appeal of the franchise is the idea that Pokemon exist in our world, but part of me wonders what could be done with a game that goes full throttle on the fantasy aspects of the Pokeon world, even more than Ruby already does.

Ruby also brings with it some new gameplay mechanics, though I'm somewhat mixed on these to be quite honest.
First off, natures and abilities are introduced here, and while I think they're a good idea in concept - I really like that you can have the option of having Pokemon specialize in different stats and that they can have these extra passive abilities - having it all be tied to RNG just feels like it's overcomplicating the process of teambuilding and catching Pokemon.
I said earlier that it's easy to pick 6 favorite Pokemon and just run with them, but that's provided you're lucky enough for those 6 Pokemon to get the RNG stat distribution that you're happy with, same with the specific Pokemon that happen to have more than one ability.
I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that this stuff is game breaking obviously, you can more than get by with sub-par natures and abilities, but if you're like me and enjoy knowing that you're playing with the best you possibly can then don't be surprised if you find yourself catching dozens of the same Pokemon just to find an acceptable one.
Kind of goes against the fantasy of finding this cool new monster and befriending it when you're just farming the whole species.

But that's really just a small drop in the ocean of amazing things this game has going for it, though the star of the show really is just the Hoenn region itself and how well realized it is as a game world.

Played this before I could even read and always got lost as all hell because I never knew where to go as a consequence of my 2 IQ kindergarten brain. I still remember the dread and how I almost cried because I thought my GameBoy was broken when one of my Pokémon got poisoned, and the screen started glitching when you walk around without healing it. Good times.

Oh and also, I accidentally killed Groudon by burning it and didn’t save beforehand, because I simply had no idea what was even happening. Anyway — despite these rather tragic circumstances, or maybe because of them, this pixel adventure will always hold a special place in my heart.

My first GBA Pokémon game. I remember playing it for hours and hours, my savefile had more than 600 hours registered! Discovering Hoenn was amazing and always chose Torchic. I still have my Blaziken from my Ruby, it's a very old and beautiful piece of data that currently lies in my Ultra Moon. Of course later I got Emerald and prefered with that, it was just better, but Ruby remains as a classic alongside Sapphire. I sold my Ruby when I was like 16, I don't know why... I really regret that and I am considering getting it again just to have all GBA games from these series and running another playthrough in wonderful Hoenn every now and then...

Growing up playing gen 3 means absolutely no critical opinions I might or might not have are completely invalid. I pretty much grew up in Hoenn. I used to pretend the houses in Rustboro were my house and the trainer school was.. a school. But that wasn't this game,it was Emerald instead. Later my mom got me a copy of Sapphire second-hand and words could not describe my fascination about how these games were actually pretty much the same, but this one had some stranger's savefile with a freshly caught Kyogre and a Blaziken instead of Swampert.

Eventually,early Youtube rolled around and by this point, I must have known Ruby was the same as Sapphire, but that's not what those early videos showed at all. Apparently Ruby was used as a base for every romhack made at that point so in my mind Ruby occupied every space inbetween hyperrealistic blood to a cutscene with Latias roaring in a puddle atop a white mountain tileset. You could catch Agumon, Weegee, Yoshi and other trainer's Pokémon in Ruby. There's probably a tech reason why Ruby was used over other games but in my head, Groudon was both cooler and all these fucked up and silly events happened ingame concurrently.

I did realize at some point that obviously, this was all made up. In fact, the exact same rumours were also made about the gen 1,2 and 4. And I beat the Elite 4 50 times and NO JIRACHI SPAWNED? Even if there's video evidence, everything online has to be bullshit. And why would anyone care about Ruby when Emerald was right there? It has all these amazing features like, uh.. your character wears green, a vastly superior colour to red. And the Battle Frontier, even if nobody actually beat it or really cared about anything other than its presence. I even picked up Alpha Sapphire instead of Omega Ruby; Primal Kyogre is just bound to be way stronger; remember how overpowered Drizzle Politoed was in Gen 5? Groudon might look cool,but it'll suck in comparison...

Years went by and wander was lost. Between all the fucked up shit,Covid and memory loss, I frankly don't know if I ever played Ruby version itself; I remember playing either it or Sapphire and being mesmerized at all the small changes Emerald had made me grow accustomed to. This playthrough was no different; it's death by a thousand papercuts to think about what they eventually improved,like how the contest halls are not in order so even if you'd like to invest time into this one feature they clearly wanted to be a big thing moving forward,it'd be frustrating to do so early game. There really is less of a point to play these games over the improved versions comparatively to all generations both moving forward and back... but in my mind and anyone who's grown up in a pre-Battle Frontier, early internet world, they're pretty special. After all, you can catch Agumon in this one.

Esse jogo é incrível em praticamente todos os aspectos!

O estilo de arte do jogo é ótimo, músicas icônicas e maravilhosas, e o principal: a ambientação diversa.
A melhor coisa é poder explorar toda Hoenn em suas diversas áreas e suas peculiaridades.

Em uma parte vc tá numa floresta, dps numa praia, dps num local próximo ao pé de um vulcão cheio de cinzas, dentro do vulcão, num navio abandonado, no fundo do mar, numa cidade nas árvores, numa caverna de meteoros e etc. Isso traz uma diversidade absurda pra cada área. Ver todo sprite diferente pra cada região, cavernas, casas, gyms. E pequenos detalhes como os crys dos pokémon podendo ser ouvido ao caminhar pelas rotas dão um charme a mais.

Agora o que não o deixa ser perfeito é o uso péssimo das HMs e da curva de exp no fim do jogo ser muito baixa em relação aos treinados, no qual vc não consegue manter um nível justo mesmo tendo batalhado com praticamente todos os treinadores do jogo (e olha q fui em rotas q nem era necessária para zerar e mesmo assim).

Mas isso prejudica mais ao final do jogo.
De resto é bem bom.

Pros: Let me first say... what the hell happened? Why is there so much less, and so many removed features from Gold & Silver? It's like this generation was a reboot of the series, which, is not necessarily a bad thing! In fact, this generation was a great introduction to a whole new age of Pokémon fans. And also, this is our first 16-bit Pokémon game, with detailed sprites, lots of color, and an art style that's super easy on the eyes. It's as if we received a Pokémon game for the Super NES. And while not everything from the previous generation returns, there are some new features to the series here, particularly 2-on-2 "double" battles (which took advantage of the GBA's new four player link cables), and a simple but very useful new mechanic, the run button, yeah, you can just run anywhere on the overworld, which is a nice in-between walking and biking. Also, battle mechanics with new abilities, are refined in this game for the most part, and other new gameplay modes like events such as Contests are pretty neat, where you can build Pokémon stats for beauty, toughness, cuteness, smartness, etc, and put them in a contest where they're judged upon, it's alright. But in general, these new additions didn't hit nearly as hard as the new additions in Gold & Silver did.

Cons: Like I said previously, what the hell happened. In so many ways, this game killed Pokémania for the generation of people that grew up with Red & Blue and moving on to Gold & Silver, such as myself. But the ways it did that, were, one, there was no connecting to the prior generations, no link cable trading, nothing, it was like a hard reset. Which, that just cut the cord for those of us who built upon our journey going from Red to Gold, expecting to go from Gold to Ruby... But nah... And two, no day and night cycles, the real time clock features felt like a significant step down here, not to mention other new features that Gold & Silver introduced were not really expanded in significant ways, like new types or breeding. Gold & Silver introduced so much to the series, that to see this new generation introduce one or two major things, and remove other major elements really sucked... man, what a kick in the gut it was upon first playing. And then comes the Pokémon themselves, and I know this is a very subjective thing, but... I'm not a fan of their new designs here, a lot of new patterns, stripes, zig-zag shapes, somethin' was changing in the way new Pokémon started to look starting with this game, and I'm not sure if it's because the new console power allowed them to showcase more complex designs or what, but I wasn't a fan. Like, what the heck is going on with Blaziken? Why are their legs so long, and standing up like a human person? That whole thing started a bad trend in my opinion for third stage starter Pokémon that's still felt in the series to this day. And the region itself, I don't wanna say too much water, but the land of Hoenn wasn't really doin' it for me either, and another step down from Gold & Silver that allowed us to travel to other regions. Just, time after time, this game paled in comparison to Gold & Silver, and I would not call it an improvement whatsoever.

What it means to me: If you couldn't tell, this was not my Pokémon, and it absolutely killed all hype I had for the series for, I don't know, decades. The gameplay is fine in a vacuum, it's an alright game on its own, but when put up against previous games in the series, it was an awkward reset... If you were someone who grew up with this one, I could see how you'd enjoy it the most, I mean, it's essentially an SNES caliber Pokémon game, that's not a bad quality to have.