Alright, let's talk about the 3rd generation of Pokemon! In my opinion, Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire represent the biggest leap in the Pokemon franchise. I personally believe these games took the series the most amount of steps forward compared to any other generation. I don't believe these are incredible and ground-breaking video games by any means, but, for Pokemon's standards, they are pretty darn good.

The most noteworthy aspect about these games is how much harder the battles are compared to the previous generations, and that's primarily due to the improved AI, the slow level-up curve of the Pokemon used by the player, and the introduction of abilities. There's much more critical thinking involved with battles compared to the first 2 generations, so players will be spending more time in battles. Furthermore, the introduction of EV's and natures means that the Pokemon in these games have far more personality than their predecessors. Not every Pokemon of the same species the player captures is going to be practically identical anymore. Their stats will change in different ways, and they may have different abilities that cause them to gain certain advantages or disadvantages compared to other members of their species.

Let's talk about the new plot. This is the first time in the franchise when Team Rocket isn't the primary crime organization, and it just feels so refreshing. Despite how retarded Team Aqua and Team Magma's plans are, at least they don't involve just making money. Furthermore, the region the teams operate in isn't Kanto or connected to Kanto; it's an entirely new location with completely new NPC's, many new Pokemon, and an almost entirely different style of music. Whereas Gold & Silver were pretty much just a continuation of Red & Blue with a very lackluster set of new things in them, Ruby & Sapphire felt like a completely new slate for Pokemon. In my opinion, there is only 1 other generation of Pokemon games that felt like this, and I'll talk about it when I get to it.

Hoenn is, in my opinion, easily the best Pokemon region of this franchise so far. It just feels so much more alive than Kanto & Johto. Some reasons for why that is include the fact that everything is in full color as opposed to being monochromatic (Gen. 1) or having a very basic color scheme and execution (Gen. 2), detailed visuals, overworld weather conditions, etc. The world is just so much more interesting to explore. In Gen. 1 and (ESPECIALLY) Gen. 2, I never got that sense of wonder from going through the region city by city and route by route; it always felt like more of the same. Here, however, the world is just so much more unpredictable and exciting. Take the underwater areas, the chambers of the regis, the ENTIRE section between Mauville City and Fortree City, Seafloor Cavern, Sky Pillar, Meteor Falls, the routes before and after Fallarbor Town, Pacifidlog Town, Team Aqua and Team Magma's hideouts (in Ruby, Sapphire, & Emerald), and Mt. Pyre. So many interesting and exciting locations filled with natural wonders just waiting to be explored. It's genuinely a breath of fresh air compared to the absolute SLOG that was the journey through Johto.

It's not just the region that has this sense of newness to it; it's also the music. Now, I'm not a music expert; in fact, I know next to NOTHING about music theory. So, unfortunately, I'll be quite brief here. All I'll say is that, if you compare the soundtrack of Gen. 3 to those of Gen. 1 and Gen. 2, it feels almost entirely different. I don't know if it's the trumpets or the fact that the system is not 8-bit anymore, but, either way, I just love the novelty in it. Again, it goes back to what I said earlier about how these games felt like a completely blank state for Pokemon. Some of my favorite themes include the Gym theme, the Gym Leader theme, Cave of Origin's theme, Petalburg Woods's theme, the crime boss's theme, Steven's theme, Groudon, Kyogre, & Rayquaza's theme, and the rival's battle theme.

While I do think these are great Pokemon games, I don't think they are incredible games in general. There will almost always be a glass ceiling when it comes to my ratings of Pokemon games, and that's because, while these games are fun to play, they're nothing special, in my opinion. There's nothing about them that ever really blows me away. The characters & storylines are practically never well-developed and nuanced, even in the games that are much better in these aspects, like Black & White. The character motivations seem very superficial and questionable most of the time, and the plots never really proceed in a way that make sense. In fact, a lot of things never make sense in these games. For instance, why do the adults always give up their evil plans after losing Pokemon battles to kids? Are they not able to carry out their malicious schemes without their Pokemon? Also, why in the living fuck do Maxie & Archie want to expand the world's landmass and seamass, respectively? They don't even seem like scientists with real, practical applications behind these goals; they just seem like schizos who got high one too many times and thought it would be a cool idea to raise these primordial deities of nature because of how much it would fuck the world up.

In the end, though, I still appreciate how much effort went into the design of these games. I honestly feel that, without them, people would've gotten burnt out of the Pokemon franchise LONG ago.

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 Blue to Silver, expecting to go from Silver to Sapphire... 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.

My first Gen 3 game from back in 02, haven't played since due to Pokemon Emerald being superior in almost every way.

Decided to play this for the hell of it. Being the first game I played this year, I had a blast despite the games shortcomings. It's a great game with wonderful music, a superb region and charming graphics. Was disappointed there was no 'superboss' at the end and if you want to use a unique team (like I did) then you have limited options until you have 4 badges.

If you haven't played a gen 3 game, just play Emerald instead, but you can't go wrong with Ruby, Sapphire or their 3d re-makes.