What a game man. I already loved Sapphire, but Pokémon Emerald has topped that game and has now become one of my favorite pokémon games. Pretty much everything wrong with the base Gen III games is fixed here; the gym leaders are harder, Team Magma and Aqua feel like different teams now that they are both in this game, more Pokémon are available at your disposal, double battles are much more frequent, and there is a lot more to do in the postgame with the Battle Frontier. (Even if I didn't really dive much into it during my playthrough, I can definitely see the appeal and I may give it a chance someday)

Hoenn is also home to some of my favorite Pokémon of all time; Swampert, Sceptile, Gardevoir, Altaria, Absol, Aggron, the weather trio, Deoxys, and many more. I love the music for what GBA was capable of, the water routes are very fun to explore, the sprites produced in this game are gorgeous. In general, this generation is just a big step up in quality from the last two.

I will say that the lack of the physical special split and limited move pools for certain Pokémon keep this from being my favorite game in the series (and also in a region that is stuffed with water, why is Wallace, a water type gym leader from Ruby and Sapphire, the champion and not Steven; that has always irked me), but regardless, Pokémon Emerald is a game that I completely get the hype around and one that I adored playing.