I was feeling nostalgic for gen 3, so I decided to play through an emerald randomizer in between some other games. My original rating is going up half a start because of the battle frontier. It's such a great addition that adds so much to the post game that I really wish I had messed around with more as a kid. I didn't go for all gold symbols this time (I've done that once and still need some recovery time before I attempt that again), but I messed around with all the battle formats for a bit and it's still just as great as the first time.
As far as the rest of the game goes, it's still pretty great. Hoenn is such a well designed region and I love all the little interconnected shortcuts between towns. It makes traveling throughout the first half of the game super streamlined and there's never much down time in between story beats.
Gen 3 is also a big step up visually from the previous games and the sprites still look great. Double battles are a nice addition that changes up the pace every once in a while and obviously the newly introduced abilities and natures are series staples now. The soundtrack is also fantastic.
The game's not super hard, but it still presents a nice challenge if you don't grind. It's always so refreshing going back to the pokemon games where the later gym leaders and elite 4 members have full teams that are at a much higher level than you.
As far as nitpicks go, the bag limit is really dumb and can be a big pace breaker if you need to go back to a pokemon center in order to deposit some items. There are also brand new HMs which nobody asked for and you'll probably cycle through a few different HM mons until you find one compatible with all the ones you need. I'm also not a big fan of this games victory road. The layout itself is fine, but I think it requires too many HMs to get through which means you most likely won't be able to use your full team in there.
If you haven't played gen 3, play emerald. It's the definitive version of the mainline gen 3 story and takes the best of ruby and sapphire while adding additional new content and revamping certain gyms. I can't deny I have a lot of nostalgia for this generation of games, since the gen 3 games and remakes were the pokemon games I played growing up, but they still hold up really well and emerald in particular offers a lot of replay value with it's new additions that still give me shit as an adult at times.
If anyone is interested my team was: Aggron (starter), Gardevoir, milotic, ampharos, scizor and torkoal.
As far as the rest of the game goes, it's still pretty great. Hoenn is such a well designed region and I love all the little interconnected shortcuts between towns. It makes traveling throughout the first half of the game super streamlined and there's never much down time in between story beats.
Gen 3 is also a big step up visually from the previous games and the sprites still look great. Double battles are a nice addition that changes up the pace every once in a while and obviously the newly introduced abilities and natures are series staples now. The soundtrack is also fantastic.
The game's not super hard, but it still presents a nice challenge if you don't grind. It's always so refreshing going back to the pokemon games where the later gym leaders and elite 4 members have full teams that are at a much higher level than you.
As far as nitpicks go, the bag limit is really dumb and can be a big pace breaker if you need to go back to a pokemon center in order to deposit some items. There are also brand new HMs which nobody asked for and you'll probably cycle through a few different HM mons until you find one compatible with all the ones you need. I'm also not a big fan of this games victory road. The layout itself is fine, but I think it requires too many HMs to get through which means you most likely won't be able to use your full team in there.
If you haven't played gen 3, play emerald. It's the definitive version of the mainline gen 3 story and takes the best of ruby and sapphire while adding additional new content and revamping certain gyms. I can't deny I have a lot of nostalgia for this generation of games, since the gen 3 games and remakes were the pokemon games I played growing up, but they still hold up really well and emerald in particular offers a lot of replay value with it's new additions that still give me shit as an adult at times.
If anyone is interested my team was: Aggron (starter), Gardevoir, milotic, ampharos, scizor and torkoal.