Upon completing gen 2 of Pokemon, I was somewhat excited to try generation 3 out with Emerald, as I heard nothing but praise as well for this game and also in the series. Upon booting the game up, the game felt entirely different compared to the other 2 games I've played.
A new generation meant a new console, which immediately boosted the quality of the game and the audio too. Starting in the Hoenn region was great as it was essentially a reboot for the series. The gameplay is still the same; catch Pokemon to build a team, get through all 8 gyms, and stop a villanous team along the way whilst becoming the Champion. Only this time, there are two teams to stop being Team Aqua and Team Magma, which was dynamic for this generation...except they could get better Pokemon. I got so fed up of battling Poochyena and Mightyena...
The rival character, May (or Brendan if you're female), seemed to be not a typical rival you're meant to hate like Blue or Silver, but rather a person who encourages you to keep going and to help their dad, Professor Birch, develop their PokeDex. Nice change of pace which made me like them a lot. In fact, some of the characters were rather cool to see, especially since one of the gym leaders is our dad!
This was the first generation in the franchise to incorporate double battles, where you and your opponents send out two Pokemon at a time and duel with them instead of singles. This opened up to so many new strategies in whether you should focus on one Pokemon, or go and give a buff to your ally and have them be the brute force. So glad to see this stay in future games as this was a nice addition to combat.
The new Pokemon added in this generation were absolute favourites to see here: Absol, Gardevoir, the starters being Mudkip, Treecko, Torchic, Metagross, and even the legendaries got their fans too - Rayquaza, Groudon, Kyogre, and even the Regi's this time. Unexpected favourites of mine during my journey were Sharpedo and Manectric since Pikachu wasn't available in this game.
That brings me to a negative with this game. Yes, I said that this was a reboot, but this was when almost every Pokemon wasn't available per game this time, and wanted you to play multiple games for the complete PokeDex. So you have to play this, the gen 1 remakes AND the two GameCube games to get everything. Which sounds like a chore for a casual Pokemon fan...especially in 2023. And on top of that, this was the first time they did special events; periods of time where Pokemon were distributed for capture by Game Freak, such as Deoxys and Mew. You can't get these Pokemon without glitches nowadays, and they should've really been in the game at the start as a bonus or something.
Overall, this game was a blast to play. Again, this game has had a remake on the 3DS, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, to which I'd prefer playing those nowadays (if you can find a copy), but otherwise, this generation is up there as one of my favourites in the series.
A new generation meant a new console, which immediately boosted the quality of the game and the audio too. Starting in the Hoenn region was great as it was essentially a reboot for the series. The gameplay is still the same; catch Pokemon to build a team, get through all 8 gyms, and stop a villanous team along the way whilst becoming the Champion. Only this time, there are two teams to stop being Team Aqua and Team Magma, which was dynamic for this generation...except they could get better Pokemon. I got so fed up of battling Poochyena and Mightyena...
The rival character, May (or Brendan if you're female), seemed to be not a typical rival you're meant to hate like Blue or Silver, but rather a person who encourages you to keep going and to help their dad, Professor Birch, develop their PokeDex. Nice change of pace which made me like them a lot. In fact, some of the characters were rather cool to see, especially since one of the gym leaders is our dad!
This was the first generation in the franchise to incorporate double battles, where you and your opponents send out two Pokemon at a time and duel with them instead of singles. This opened up to so many new strategies in whether you should focus on one Pokemon, or go and give a buff to your ally and have them be the brute force. So glad to see this stay in future games as this was a nice addition to combat.
The new Pokemon added in this generation were absolute favourites to see here: Absol, Gardevoir, the starters being Mudkip, Treecko, Torchic, Metagross, and even the legendaries got their fans too - Rayquaza, Groudon, Kyogre, and even the Regi's this time. Unexpected favourites of mine during my journey were Sharpedo and Manectric since Pikachu wasn't available in this game.
That brings me to a negative with this game. Yes, I said that this was a reboot, but this was when almost every Pokemon wasn't available per game this time, and wanted you to play multiple games for the complete PokeDex. So you have to play this, the gen 1 remakes AND the two GameCube games to get everything. Which sounds like a chore for a casual Pokemon fan...especially in 2023. And on top of that, this was the first time they did special events; periods of time where Pokemon were distributed for capture by Game Freak, such as Deoxys and Mew. You can't get these Pokemon without glitches nowadays, and they should've really been in the game at the start as a bonus or something.
Overall, this game was a blast to play. Again, this game has had a remake on the 3DS, Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, to which I'd prefer playing those nowadays (if you can find a copy), but otherwise, this generation is up there as one of my favourites in the series.